VII. A BRIEF OBITER: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AHEAD OF THE HYDROSPHERE In the elaboration of the essay, we could not, albeit as an incidens, fail to consider, also from a katechontic perspective, the main peculiarities of the Internet of Things and, more generally, of artificial intelligence in order to highlight whether they, as opportunities, can be easily sustained in view of an increasingly complex tourism favor, or whether, on the contrary, they in some ways should, as problems, be delayed in order to be better pondered, especially legally, in light of the ecological urgencies that lie before us starting with the alarming data on water consumption that they seem to generate. We know that the birth and development of civilizations have always been closely dependent on the availability of water so much so that the evolution of many civilizations of antiquity derived precisely from the establishment of forms of government necessary for the definition and regulation of water distribution systems and networks that allowed agricultural activities. To better understand the value of the water resource on the globe, some simple quantitative considerations can be reported from which it can be deduced that nearly 80 percent of our planet’s surface is covered with water, but 96 percent is salt water; the remaining fresh water is divided into 1.7 percent groundwater, 1.6 percent fresh water in the solid state, and only 0.2 percent surface water. Thus, it is evident clean water available for human needs is a finite commodity. And it is no coincidence that more than half of the world’s population has problems related to water shortages for at least one month a year and that the latest UN Water Report estimates that by 2040 there will be at least 20 new nations joining the countries already suffering from periodic water crises. For these very reasons, the UN has defined water as an environmental, social and economic cornerstone and clean and safe drinking water as an essential human right for the full enjoyment of life and other human rights. Among the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, goal number 6 is clean water and sanitation. The presence of water is, moreover, a determining factor in climate regulation, and on the other hand, the availability of the resource is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Well, if smart cities, on the one hand, represent a good opportunity to cope with healthier and more sustainable development through the use of increasingly sophisticated technologies that will make it possible to monitor and anticipate 184 FRANCESCO GASPARI | LUIGI CAMERIERO
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