#59: Expedition ARCHIE: Water resilience for Arctic installations

Water is critical to life and essential for Warfighter operations. However, accessing it in frigid Arctic conditions can be a challenge. To meet this need, a portable water treatment system developed by ERDC was successfully demonstrated at the U.S. Department of War’s northernmost installation. The Deployable Resilient Installation water Purification and treatment System (DRIPS) supplied potable water at Pituffik Space Base in Greenland. The test occurred during Expedition ARCHIE (the Arctic Resource Conservation Hydration Innovation Experiment), an international collaboration between ERDC, the U.S. Space Force and the Danish Defence Estate Agency. Joining us to discuss how DRIPS can improve water supply in the Arctic is Dr. Clint Smith, a senior research biologist at ERDC’s Geospatial Research Laboratory. Topics include the challenge of water resilience in the Arctic (1:28), the capabilities of the DRIPS system (9:12) and how it performed at Expedition ARCHIE (15:59). We also talk about ERDC’s participation in an international collaboration for Polar research (4:26), how DRIPS benefits from ERDC’s multidisciplinary expertise (20:47) and how the team is working with industry to rapidly transition the technology (24:00). Visit PowerofERDCPodcast.org/59-Expedition-ARCHIE_resources for more information about DRIPS and the experiment at Pituffik Space Base. Watch a video of this podcast at PowerofERDCPodcast.org/59-Expedition-ARCHIE_video.