Booming economic development during the past decades has made the East and Southeast Asian region one of the most dynamic economies in the world and brought about rapid urbanization. It is expected that Asia will account for 12 of the world’s 25 cities with population exceeding 10 million by 2000. Tokyo will have more than 27 million people and Shanghai and Jakarta will each have more than 20 million people. Demand for water supply, as a result, will drastically increase. Data show that most of the East and Southeast Asian countries are faced with serious water shortage and contamination, in particular in the urbanized areas. The vulnerability of water supply constituents one of the greatest threats to the sustainable socio economic development of the region. Great efforts have been made to conserve both surface and subsurface water resources, to protect water from contamination and to use water in an efficient way. In addition to the establishment of administrative agencies under the governments in individual countries, a number of regional and country wide projects have been launched for a solution to ease the water vulnerability. The Coordinating Committee for Coastal and Offshore Geoscience Programmes in East and Southeast Asia (CCOP), an intergovernmental organization of the region, has devoted itself to coordinating regional endeavours to solve applied geoscientific problems through technology transfer, human resources development and regional data compilation. The regional map series and related databases produced by CCOP have provided useful information on regional geological background, which is also essential for the solution of water problems. However, it is obvious that regional efforts are not enough to meet the challenges we are faced with. In addition to raising public awareness and governmental concerns, advanced technologies, in particular those used in the petroleum industry to deal with oil and gas, a sort of fluid resources similar to water, must be adopted to the water supply industry. Since 1996, CCOP has, in cooperation with the developed countries, been working on a project called Petrowater. The Project aims at using the technology and infrastructures related to the oil industry to the water supply industry.
