To mark World Water Day, digital animations conveying the gravity of global declines in groundwater just went on display on two billboards in Times Square. The animations, based on satellite data provided by NASA and the University of California, Irvine, and statistics from the United States Geological Survey, will be shown several times each hour through April 22.
The effort was organized by HeadsUp, an international competition challenging designers to create a visualization related to world water issues. (The winner was Richard Vijgen, an information designer in the Netherlands.)
Here’s a video from HeadsUp:
HeadsUp! Nasdaq screen from Heads Up! 2012 on Vimeo.
3:23 p.m. | Updated
The American intelligence community is warning that water shortages could destabilize countries in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia over the next decade, Steven Lee Myers reports. In a new assessment, it says that countries could use water as political and economic leverage over neighbors and that dams and desalination plants could become targets of terrorist attacks.