Mixed Reality Promoting Circular Economy in Urban Water Systems

By 2030, global water demand is expected to surpass supply by 40%, and only 81% of the global population will have access to clean drinking water, leaving 1.6 billion without water. In response to the global water crisis, the circular economy as a concept has been proposed and advocated over the past few decades, seeking to minimize waste, recover resources, and reduce consumption by sharing, reusing, and recycling water resources. However, there have been limitations in distributing the accumulated knowledge to the general public due to resource accessibility and interpretability of condensed information. To further promote the implementation of a circular economy, it is crucial to educate the public on its concepts and effects to encourage behavioral and policy changes. Consequently, this research seeks to bridge the gap by using cutting-edge technologies to increase public awareness. Mixed reality (MR) provides an immersive experience and integrates the physical and digital worlds as it allows users to interact with digital objects that are overlaid with the actual world, resulting in a more effective learning experience. This study presented a general framework for developing MR applications in educating the public on circular economy in urban water systems, which involves developing an MR application to be deployed on a mixed reality headset, namely Microsoft HoloLens2.