PhD dissertation: An Ethnography of and with Promising Sensibilities, Scalability, and Collaborations in Smart Water Infrastructures

The past decade has seen an uptake of digital technologies within traditional water supply systems. These digital technologies, along with the data they produce, are increasingly perceived by their main advocates to be promising solutions to withstand the significant pressure inflicted on water networks by what they refer to as “the great water challenges of our time, namely climate change, population growth and ageing infrastructure” (IWA, 2023). Nonetheless, what exactly constitutes “digital water”, its infrastructure, and how it is made “smart” in practice remains emergent and unclear. This is also the case in Denmark, where political and state apparatuses currently employ novel strategies that entwine investments in innovative water technologies with the scaling of narratives of Danish exceptionalism about digitalization, progress, and sustainability for export purposes.

Drawing on approximately 12 months of intermittent ethnographic fieldwork conducted between January 2022 and September 2023 among water professionals at water utility companies, universities, private companies, interest organisations, and ministries in Denmark and Italy, this thesis examines how the digitalization of water has implications that extend beyond water management, and into discussions of the current and future nature of welfare, of neo-liberalism, international relations, capitalism, more-than-human sensing practices, and knowledge production.