Last Word: How Digital Subsurface Insight Can Reshape Water Resilience

Today, we are seeing what I call a perfect storm facing water managers. A myriad of challenges are complicating the ability to supply sufficient, affordable water. Changing weather patterns – from prolonged droughts to increasingly intense flood events – are colliding with anthropogenic challenges. These include urbanization and the rapid growth of water-intensive industries like data centers.

At the same time, aquifer restoration efforts intended to mitigate these and other challenges are adding operational complexity. On top of all that, forever chemicals (PFAS) are introducing yet another complicating layer into already strained water systems. Together, these forces are converging at a moment when groundwater – our most resilient buffer against uncertainty – is under unprecedented pressure.

When one is faced with multiple conflicting challenges, holistic problem-solving becomes essential because it puts everything on one page, as it were. Yet much of our water comes from the underground. Around 70 percent of our potable water lies in aquifers, hidden from view, hard to explain, and often poorly understood by non-technical stakeholders. This invisibility becomes a liability when decisions with long-term financial, environmental, and public-health consequences must be made quickly and defensibly.

Making the Invisible Visible Through Digital Technology

Digital technology now provides tools that make it possible to bring that hidden world onto a visible, shared platform. This shift is especially important as water utilities and regulators face heightened scrutiny – from investors, insurers and the public alike – around climate resilience, contamination risk, and infrastructure spending. Therefore, making the subsurface visible is critical for technical understanding and for collaboration and alignment across the many stakeholders involved in water management today.

That alignment underpins holistic, durable solutions. Furthermore, digital technologies let us understand and collaborate around risk, rather than react to crises after they occur. Water managers can now ask and answer questions such as: Where could contaminants from this brownfield site flow? What are the impacts on PFAS plumes and declining water levels from increased withdrawals for a new data centre, a facility that may be economically vital to a community? Can a managed aquifer recharge facility sufficiently mitigate declining water levels or saltwater intrusion under future weather conditions?

An example of this in action comes from rural Brazil, where a fuel pipeline leak threatened the groundwater supplies relied upon by nearby communities. Environmental specialists developed a high-resolution 3D subsurface model to visualise the contaminant plume and understand how it was migrating through layered sediments toward vital water sources.

Real-World Impact: Digital Solutions in Action

They were able to precisely map contamination pathways and design a targeted remediation plan that directly protected potable water supplies.

The outcomes were significant: the digital approach reduced remediation costs by approximately 70 percent, cut project duration by six weeks relative to traditional methods, slashed the volume of chemical reagents required, and materially reduced carbon emissions associated with the cleanup. Furthermore, accurate subsurface understanding avoided unnecessary regulatory constraints, generating additional cost-savings. Importantly, the project received recognition at Bentley Systems’ 2025 Year in Infrastructure Founders’ Awards for its technical excellence and protection of community water resources.

Digital tools place these potential outcomes into a context that is transparent and accessible – and can be kept up to date with very little effort. It is imperative to understand that this is a 3D world under our feet. A plume is not a flat map, and it is uncertain. Aquifers are complicated spatial systems, shaped by geology, stress, and time. Ignoring that complexity can lead to poor and ineffective solutions, or worse, costly missteps that undermine public trust.

A Future Built on Subsurface Intelligence

Experience has shown that accounting for this complexity up front reduces risk, increases transparency, and significantly improves chances for success. The encouraging reality is that digital technology has made it far easier and more accessible than even a decade ago.

This is not theoretical. These benefits are being realised all over the world today. Examples include addressing complex PFAS challenges in the US and providing potable water to refugee camps in some of the most resource-constrained regions globally. In an era marked by geopolitical instability, climate-driven displacement, and competing demands on water, these examples demonstrate what is possible. Such achievements are possible when subsurface intelligence is treated as strategic infrastructure rather than a support function.

If this approach works in a refugee camp – where constraints are extreme, and stakes are high – why wouldn’t we apply the same level of intelligence and foresight to the water-resource challenges facing cities, industries, and utilities worldwide? In a world of growing uncertainty, proactive, digitally enabled understanding of the subsurface is no longer optional; it is foundational to resilient water management.

Thomas Krom, Ph.D., is environment segment director at Seequent.

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