In response to growing concerns over climate change and its potential impact on low-lying coastal regions, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it will establish an IBM Global Center of Excellence for Water Management in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Climate change is making a central assumption of water management obsolete: Water-resource risk assessment and planning are currently based on the notion that factors such as precipitation and streamflow fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability.

Bathing beaches and lakes could fail the new cleanliness standards set by the 2006 Bathing Waters Directive, but a new risk assessment tool developed by rural studies and water management experts may help reduce the transfer of disease causing bacteria from the farmed environment, according to scientists speaking today at the Society for General Microbiology’s 161st Meeting at the University of Edinburgh, UK, which runs from 3-6 September 2007.

World Bank Supports Second On-Farm Irrigation Project