University of Surrey warns of pending Water Crisis

A report completed by Surrey academics and more than 100 professionals across the water sector says that the water sector must understand human behaviour.

It opens with the projection that England will face a daily shortfall of five billion litres of freshwater by 2055.

The study highlights targets in order to help reduce the crisis.

• Understanding how people make water-use decisions and what influences them.

• Improving knowledge sharing across the sector to accelerate learning and collaboration.

• Using smart sensors to better understand water usage behind-closed-doors - to unobtrusively gain accurate insight into domestic habits

Ben Gardner, who is a psychology lecturer at the University of Surrey who specialises in behaviour change, says the report is an attempt to communicate to the water industry and to the public what kind of actions need to be taken

"This report is all about trying to establish a road map for what action needs to be taken

We need to do something beyond smart metering and actually what we need to do is to really help people to change how they're using water."

Gardner says that there at the moment there's a massive knowledge gap in the sector due to a lack of education on the issue.

"If you ask someone how much water they use per day, you know, most people will have a guess at roughly 20 litres, but actually we use on average, 137 litres each per day.

I think part of the problem here is that people don't fully understand how they use water, and that's because we don't educate people on water use. "

The main way the report suggests to fix this issue would be the use of smart meters to better understand where and how much water is used.

"These kind of devices are going to be all important for understanding how people are using water when they're using water, which households are using most water, and we need that information to develop better strategies."

So it's entirely understandable that people don't don't understand how much they use"

Gardner also says that there's responsibilities for companies to innovate, to create products that help us use less water.

"What needs to be done just as important, if not more important, is for companies to develop products that help people to do their day-to-day jobs in a more water efficient way.

For example, dishwashers that actually use less water but achieve the same results. "

Hear all the latest news from across the UK on the hour, every hour, on Greatest Hits Radio on DAB, smartspeaker, at greatesthitsradio.co.uk, and on the Rayo app.