Ethical and Privacy Challenges in AI-Driven Water Management
Naveen Kumar, Devesh Singh, Piyush Sharma, Pankaj Kumar Chaurasia, Sunita Singh, Ajay · 2025
Water management is a serious issue in international forums, and water harvesting and recycling are important to address the global water crisis. With pollution from sectors such as agriculture, mining, industrial production, and untreated urban runoff, about 97% of the water is salty and unsuitable for drinking. Traditional methods are ineffective and not cost-effective; therefore, there is a need for the adoption of the latest information and communication technologies (ICT) to make water management more prominent, efficient, and sustainable. Artificial intelligence (AI) has immense potential in modernizing water management systems by improving predictive analytics, allocating resources optimally, and guaranteeing sustainable water use. In the last few years, we have seen a rapid rise in technologies based on AI, and if we talk about water management, a lot of work has been reported in the research area and is ongoing as well. The execution of AI algorithms often requires the collection and testing of unlimited datasets that may include sensitive information, such as data about users, communities, and ecosystems. Therefore, this raises concerns about data privacy, ownership, and user consent, and hence, resolving privacy and ethical issues in AI-driven water management requires a diverse strategy that focuses on accountability, inclusion, and transparency. Thus, due to a lot of complex ethical issues associated with this technology, there is an urgent need to develop “responsible AI” aligned with human and ethical values for water management. This chapter highlights the challenges of ethical and regulatory implications of AI-powered water management solutions, covering aspects of data privacy, accountability, transparency, and agreement with international values.