When Jiří F. Potužník approached the Czech Technical University in Prague with the idea of extracting water from desert air using only sunlight, and using the water to irrigate a garden in the desert, the scientists thought it was a crazy enough idea to be worth pursuing. After initial calculations, it was found that it could be done, and that the idea was not so misguided after all. It was when the technological part of the concept of the Solar Air Water Earth Resource (S.A.W.E.R.), the Czech Republic's participation in EXPO 2020 in Dubai, was born. The technical development and the implementation of the technology were taken over in the autumn of 2017 by a team at the University Centre for Energy-Efficient Buildings of CTU, led by Tomáš Matuška. In addition to the University Centre for Energy-Efficient Buildings of CTU (UCEEB), the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the CTU in Prague was involved in the development.
