Our friends at Circle of Blue — a network of journalists, scientists and designers — just sent word of “Designing Water’s Future,” an international competition launched by the Aspen Institute Design Challenge. This cross-disciplinary initiative is commensurate with the emerging paradigm in water management that recognizes that society needs a new approach if we wish to reconcile the varied and often conflicting uses of water — from its role in delineating political boundaries, irrigating crops, and producing electricity to its value in spiritual, cultural, and recreational needs. This contest will challenge student teams to develop design solutions that explore new ways of understanding and communicating the complexities of the global water crisis while creating a visual identity that can inform and inspire people to act at the local level, where real solutions are likely to emerge.

For more information on the competition, click here.

“It is up to you to meet the energy demands of your city’s 3.9 million people…” says a SimCity-style game, Energyville, that allows you to design your city’s energy portfolio while balancing economic, environmental, and security costs.  When Energyville debuted last year some argued that the game was green-wash while others were enthused about the potential to engage a young, multimedia-savvy audience in energy issues. All sides of the debate can weigh in at willjoinus.com, Chevron’s site that offers a discussion forum and highlights issues like food-energy-environment interactions– all while keeping a tally of the amount of the oil that is consumed worldwide during your visit.

For more digital activism check out a simulation on the crisis in Darfur, and a vocabulary game that helps end hunger.

Natural disaster relief efforts represent a nexus between NGOs, private volunteer organizations, and the  military. This theme dominated Wednesday’s Defense Ministerial of the Americas (DMA), panel discussion hosted by the Council of the Americas. The DMA is an organization that seeks to advance regional security cooperation.  With this in mind, panelist Colonel John Cope, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies, proposed that the DMA refine the collaborative process in the context of natural disaster relief.  The important question was then raised, ‘how can we manage the divide between civilian and military agencies across international boundaries?’

To learn more on bridging this gap, read these lessons learned on the October 2005 Kashmir earthquake relief efforts from a geography Professor at West Point.

While we at GSI’s Global Water Futures project are dedicated to promoting far-sighted thinking about the growing imbalance between global water supply and demand, our friends at Population Services International (PSI) are on the ground helping to turn water that harbors bacteria and causes cholera, diarrhea and other fatal diseases into water that saves lives. Most recently, after Cyclone Nargis ravaged the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar PSI’s headquarters in Yangon became a distribution point providing the simple chlorine solution, WaterGuard, to international and local NGOs, UN agencies, as well as private individuals organizing deliveries.

Through this collaboration, PSI/Myanmar provided enough free solution to treat one month’s worth of drinking water for nearly 1.6 million people. Not only did PSI/Myanmar provide cyclone victims with an inexpensive, in-country produced product, PSI’s Water Works newsletter notes that they harnessed the power of “personal and professional partnerships, between friends, colleagues, loved ones and strangers on the street…to manage this catastrophe together” - a strategy to keep in mind for future disasters affecting water supply.

No matter how much some would like to think that sports should stand apart from politics and economics, this New York Times chart mapping summer Olympic medals paints a fluid picture of how the world has changed over the last century.  Clicking between the years on the map presents the viewer with a story of morphing politics, increasing opportunities, and mounting challenges.  Here are a few things to try out as you interact with the chart:

1) Compare the first three years listed on the chart (1896, 1900, 1904) with the last three (1996, 2000, 2004).  What looks like a random arrangement of circles in the former set transforms into a discernible map of the world in the latter.

2) Look again at the most recent years.  While the graph does look much more like a map, it is still greatly disproportional to the actual landmasses and the populations who live in each continent.  Look at Europe (most of the green) in comparison to Africa and Latin America.  Europe is only a third of Africa’s size, but the “map” of Olympic medals would not tell you that.

3) Start at 1974 to get a reference point.  Then, click between the 1980 Games in Moscow and 1984 Games in Los Angeles, and watch the world transform.  Unlike other changes across years, which can be seen as functions of economic opportunity, the 1980-1984 is a clear portrayal of the politics of the day.

4) Watch the Cold War from an Olympic stadium seat.  As you click through the Cold War years, watch the Soviet Union and the severed Germany as they grow.  Then, watch the fallout of the war and the emergence of the post-Soviet satellite states.

5) Also, pay attention to this year’s host, China, which does not even jump onto the map until 1984.  Clicking through the years and watching the Chinese circle begin to expand, one cannot help but speculate as to what this year’s circle will look like, especially considering the Chinese approach to the 2008 Games.

While a chart mapping Olympic medals is not a direct indicator of economic or political might, it does indirectly tell us something of the way the world worked and looked throughout the last century.  Boycotts and even the names of participating states tell us about the political environment.  Numbers of metals, while partially based on talent, also reflect the availability of resources within a state.

Not every state has the human or financial capital available to invest in Olympian training and travel expenses, but today, more and more regions and states are represented in Olympic wins.  This portrays a world where the playing field is becoming increasingly even, though the disproportional representation of wins reminds us that it is not yet entirely flat.