Implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Approach on Overcoming Life Quality Uncertainty

Ilham Putra Adiyaksa

National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russian Federation

“I know there is hope, in this water.”

Adele once stated in her ‘Easy on Me’ song that from water everything begins: hope, dream, and even love. As we know, water become the most needed material since everything in our live connects to water. Our clothes, phones, foods, and all of our things at home are made by water. Sometimes we think that we use water only for drinking, washing clothes, or showering. We don’t remember that our jeans are made by 9.800 liters of water, our phone is made by 12.500 liters of water, and our package of fast food is made by 2.660 liters of water. We sometimes simply don’t remember –or in many cases don’t understand.

Since this fact is uncommon in our society, people buy food as many as they want then make it wasted, buy every new phone while the old phone is greatly working, buy every new model of dress and suits. Beside trash issue, the big issue behind is water. Again, all those things are made by water, and since people are not concerning on that fact then water just become unvaluable material.

This have been happening in many countries in the world, including Indonesia. Indonesia today is facing big water issue since the population is growing rapidly and, of course, it leads to water need increasing in the country while the water system is not ready enough –at least in many areas. Even in Jakarta, they could not use the ground water today since the ground water quality is decreasing, and Jakarta is facing “sinking problem”. If people don’t have that environmental awareness, people just do anything they want; buy new phone, shoes, wasting food. All these activities will lead to water scarcity. People will explore water as much as they can, utilize it, flowing the wastewater into water body (again, the system is not ready enough), then it will contaminate water in the river and groundwater in general, which will affect to our life quality.

Since our life quality is determined by our water quality, we and our team did research in 2022 [1], and found that there is a linier correlation between the amount of drink water’s chemical, especially the metal compound, and risk to health of human from that exposure. When water is used unwisely and supported by unready system –in this case wastewater treatment system, the chemical of water will be increased, which means that the water has higher risk to the water consumer’s health. And even, in our research we found that child has, in general, highest risk compare with adult’s consumer. We can imagine, if we get sick due to bad water quality, we cannot work, study, do economical, social, and even political activities. How dependent our lives on water quality.

Talking about water quality, Sidoarjo, Indonesia is a good example how we need a great solution on overcoming this water quality issue. This is a really serious problem in Sidoarjo because people still use well water at their own home, which is uncontrolled, as their daily intake for any purposes. We have our centralized system, but now it reaches only for people who are living in the center of city. That’s why, for people in another part of city, it is necessary to understand the quality of water at their own home. But the problem is: water testing is not accessible for everyone since it costs high and the ‘water-quality laboratory’ is rare thing to hear. In Sidoarjo, the water quality decreasing is affected not only by the people’s activities, but Lapindo mud as well. As reminder, Lapindo mud occurred due to unsuccessful gas and oil exploration in 2006 then submerged more than 12 villages. Since the mud itself contains bunch of chemicals, especially the heavy metal, research shows that it affects to the water quality [2].

Then why don’t we utilize the great human invention in this century –artificial intelligence (AI)?

We see today that AI is utilized for many purposes –from agriculture, gas and oil production, economy, restaurant and even hotel services. It helps human a lot since human is able to ‘train’ machine to become what human want. So, we can imagine that similar solution could be developed to overcome the water quality issue.

This AI-based solution is needed to replace the ‘laboratory-based water testing’, which is high-cost and taking much time, to ‘rapid water testing’ that accessible for everyone, cost-able, and fast. Once it developed, people will easily to understand their life condition, since understanding water quality means understanding our own life, right? Yes, water is life.

And finally, water issue could be solved by rebuilding connection between people and water. It’s true that technology right now is needed because the problem is getting worst, but the important thing is how we should understand our relation with water –and environment in general. Technology means nothing if we don’t feel that relationship. Once a French famous filmmaker, Jacoues Cousteau, said “we forget that water cycle and life cycle are one”. This understanding is essential.

Reference:

[1] I.P. Adiyaksa, A.A. Sulianto, and O.G. Savichev. 2022. Water quality assessment and risk analysis calculation of chloride and sodium exposure of well water in Tanggulangin, Sidoarjo. JKPTB 10 (2), p. 92-100. https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.jkptb.2022.010.02.01.

[2] S. W. Auvaria and I. Munfarida, “Analysis of Environmental Capacity (Water Pollution Load) in the Porong Area, Sidoarjo Regency, ex Lapindo Mining,” J. Presipitasi, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 104–112, Jul. 2020, doi: 10.14710/presipitasi.v17i2.104-112.