Water scarcity directly impacts business activities, raw material supply, intermediate supply chain, and product use in a variety of ways. Declines or disruptions in water supply can undermine industrial and manufacturing operations where water is needed for production, irrigation, material processing, cooling and/or washing and cleaning. The semiconductor industry, for example, uses vast amounts of purified water in fabrication plants, for washing the silicon wafers at several different stages in the fabrication process and for cooling various tools; a brief water-related shutdown at a manufacturing plant could compromise all material in production for an entire quarter. Businesses’ traditional water use estimates.
