This article explores a practical, innovation-led approach to solving water scarcity. It traces how unconventional research methods led from early engineering work into irrigation, soil regeneration, and water harvesting systems. By focusing on how water actually moves through soil, how long it remains useful, and how simple systems like wicking beds can extend water availability, it presents a realistic pathway for farmers, communities, and governments to adapt to drought, climate variability, and growing water pressure.
Introduction
This talk is about finding innovative solutions to the water crisis. Rather than presenting finished answers, it explains the thinking behind the development of many ideas and why failure, experimentation, and redirection are essential parts of innovation. Technical detail can always be added later, but the core issue is how new ways of thinking lead to workable systems.
In the early 1970s, while working as a lecturer at RMIT in Melbourne, I developed software to predict how hot plastic flows into a cold mould. At first glance this seems unrelated to water, but mathematically it is the same problem. It involves solving a moving front problem, which is directly analogous to how water moves through soil during irrigation.
From Manufacturing Software to Water Systems
That early work led to the creation of a company called Moldflow. By chance, it had the right product at the right time and grew into one of Australia’s most successful exporters of technical software. Our customers included major manufacturers in electronics, automotive, appliances, and aerospace. We were a small company competing against global giants.
Survival depended on doing something different. Large organisations follow disciplined, logical research paths, what might be called competence research. Innovation, however, rarely follows a neat sequence. We developed what I later called pioneering research: deliberately starting projects without clear outcomes, accepting failure, and redirecting resources quickly when new insights appeared.
This zig-zag approach worked. Moldflow eventually dominated its niche globally and was floated on the NASDAQ for $140 million. The same mindset was later applied to water research, where competing head-on with large institutions like CSIRO would have been futile.
Early Experiments and Failed Ideas
One early experiment was the so-called “froth machine.” Plants need both air and water, and water does not move easily sideways through soil. The idea was to pump an air–water froth through the soil so air would carry fine droplets everywhere. In practice, the air simply escaped to the surface and the water drained downward. The project failed completely, apart from entertaining farm dogs chasing escaping air jets.
Another idea involved an “expanda tube,” a lay-flat pipe buried in soil, expanded with high-pressure water to crack the soil, then drained to leave a cavity for irrigation. This too failed. Yet both projects contributed insights that eventually led to workable solutions combining air, water, and soil structure.
Subsurface Irrigation and Scheduling
Years of experimentation pointed toward subsurface irrigation, but conventional designs allowed water to percolate downward with little lateral movement. By applying water at higher flow rates for shorter periods, hydraulic forces could push water sideways instead of down.
This required redesigning delivery systems, splitting fields into small zones and using simple mechanical switches to divert flow sequentially. Although technically effective, the cost could not be justified. Meanwhile, farmers were surviving droughts simply through better irrigation scheduling.
Scheduling raises two questions: when to irrigate and how much water to apply. Knowing when to irrigate is relatively easy. Plants and soil provide clear signals, and farmers often have good intuition. The harder problem is knowing how much water to apply.
Irrigation Depth, Not Moisture Content
Conventional wisdom focuses on soil water-holding capacity, but this is of limited practical use. Water does not distribute evenly through soil, plant uptake is uneven, and rainfall constantly disrupts moisture patterns. The system is a dynamic, three-dimensional flow problem.
What really matters is irrigation depth: how deep the wetting front penetrates. Too shallow and water is lost to evaporation; too deep and it drains past the root zone, carrying nutrients and creating salinity risks. Depth is easier to understand, measure, and manage than total moisture content.
A predictor–corrector approach was developed, measuring conditions before and after irrigation and refining predictions over time. Farmers simply specify a target penetration depth and the system calculates how much water to apply.
Lessons from Africa
Work with World Vision in Africa highlighted a crucial lesson: technology must match local capacity. Low-cost tubing originally designed for subsurface irrigation was adapted to improve flood irrigation. Results varied widely depending on skill, land levelling, and flow control.
Computer simulation of flood irrigation allowed hundreds of virtual experiments, revealing that short runs and rapid flows could achieve high efficiency. This led to the development of micro-flood irrigation using simple mechanical valves.
Yet even efficient irrigation did not solve the real problem in Africa. Crops often failed not from lack of total rainfall, but from short dry periods during critical growth stages. The issue was not efficiency, but the useful life of water in the soil.
Extending the Useful Life of Water
Engineers use entropy to describe not just how much energy exists, but how useful it is. Water has the same two dimensions: quantity and useful life. Extending the useful life of water can be more powerful than improving efficiency alone.
The wicking bed system does exactly this. By storing water below ground and allowing it to wick upward as needed, it creates stable moisture conditions, reduces evaporation, and buffers crops against short dry spells.
In Australia, rainfall per person is enormous when averaged across the continent, yet we harvest only about one two-thousandth of it. Conventional systems rely on premium dam water, while vast amounts of low-grade rainfall go unused.
Probability, Rainfall, and Anticipatory Irrigation
Rainfall is probabilistic. If there is a small daily chance of rain, the probability of rain occurring over several weeks becomes significant. If irrigation systems can bridge those intervals, large water savings are possible.
By managing soil to hold water for 20 days, irrigation demand could drop dramatically. During wet periods, dams refill naturally, providing security for drought years.
Wicking beds, swales, leaky dams, and twin dam systems are simple technologies that extend water availability. Even household systems can store weeks of irrigation water underground without using extra space.
The Need for a Paradigm Shift
There is no free lunch. These systems require effort, learning, and a change in mindset. Communities are accustomed to abundant, cheap water, but expanding dams further carries unacceptable environmental costs.
A shift in thinking is required, away from centralised supply alone and toward distributed water harvesting and storage. Governments must lead this change, supporting systems that extend the useful life of water rather than relying solely on volume.
The water crisis is not just about rainfall. It is about systems, timing, storage, and how intelligently we manage the water we already receive. Innovation, not just infrastructure, will determine our future resilience.
