Today there are still over 663 million people living without access to a safe water supply, disrupting their livelihoods and endangering their wellbeing. Individuals might walk long distances to reach community water sources to discover these are broken or empty, or alternatively face the health risks involved in drinking untreated water. Key difficulties in sustaining and expanding reliable water services include poor accountability, unreliable maintenance and inefficient payment channels.
On World Water Day we’re celebrating the role of mobile technology in supporting innovative and sustainable delivery models for water. By providing solutions for monitoring, triggering maintenance, improving accountability and customer relationships and enabling effective payment collections, mobile has demonstrated its potential to greatly improve traditional water service delivery. As almost half of those lacking access to reliable water sources are covered by GSM networks, mobile provides a key opportunity in the achievement of SDG 6: ensuring available and sustainable water and sanitation for all.
Since 2013, the Mobile for Development (M4D) programme has funded 10 projects that leverage mobile technology to extend the reach of clean water. On this occasion we caught up with the very first grantees to learn more about their journeys and progress towards promoting effective and equitable water services.
Portland State University (PSU) and their partners, SweetSense Inc. and Living Water International (LWI), received an M4D Utilities Seed Grant to test the use of GSM-enabled sensors to monitor rural water handpumps in Rwanda. Although handpumps are a common water service technology in much of rural Africa, an estimated one in three are not functional due to a lack of operations and maintenance services. The GSM-enabled sensors addressed this issue through sensor-driven maintenance. The sensor was placed inside the pump head to detect whether the pump was functional and sent data via GSM network to a central online dashboard. The PSU pilot demonstrated significant increases in the average functionality of hand pumps and a reduction in repair time compared to traditional maintenance models.
Since the end of their GSMA grant, SweetSense Inc.’s mission to “improve the transparency, accountability, and cost-effectiveness of water, energy, and infrastructure projects” has continued. Today, SweetSense Inc. develops and deploys cellular and satellite connected sensors that monitor water quality, air quality, sanitation quality, service delivery, operations and maintenance in remote areas where basic utilities are often intermittent, and is amongst the leading remote monitoring solutions providers. As founder Evan Thomas explains: “We fix the Internet of Broken Things”. The company has sold over 2,000 sensors in 15 countries, deployed on applications ranging from water pumps, latrines, cookstoves, handwashing stations, and other innovative solutions intended to reduce poverty and improve health in emerging markets. Along with hardware, they also provide online platforms and data analysis services.
At present, SweetSense have about 110 new water point sites covered with sensors since the GSMA grant, reaching about 90,000 people. The company has also recently secured a hardware and services contract worth approximately $1.8 million over five years with the Millennium Water Alliance to develop and deliver 400 sensor systems for rural water points, and to develop financially sustainable business models for water service providers to improve the reliability and reduce the cost of delivering these services to rural communities in Kenya.
The distribution of water in Bangalore, India, is often intermittent and unpredictable due to water scarcity, with households in some areas receiving water for only a few hours a week, and distribution controlled manually by valvemen. NextDrop was awarded an M4D Utilities Seed Grant to develop and deploy an information system which collected and disseminated data on water delivery by the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewage Board (BWSSB). The platform provided near real-time ground-level information on water distribution, leading to data-driven decisions that resulted in improved service levels. It also allowed customers receive advance notice regarding water provision, helping them better manage their daily routines and increasing transparency and accountability. The solution led to a 90 per cent reduction in complains to the BWSSB call center, and helped stabilize water supply in 14 per cent of valve areas.
Since concluding their pilot, NextDrop has replaced their business model from crowdsourcing water data through a mobile application to implementing low-cost sensor technology. This change was prompted by key challenges faced by a fast-moving start-up working with a large urban utility. Anu Sridharan, co-founder of NextDrop, explains that, “The mobile tech for water is rapidly evolving, with water scarcity rising and the cost for environmental sensing rapidly dropping. This is causing utilities to rethink how they track their water resources, especially given the rapidly growing population and the direct link to GDP growth”. A small pilot in the city of Bangalore will introduce sensor-technology in the water distribution systems to provide real-time water monitoring. Such sensors will also be used to resume sending out customer alerts, including providing additional information including detecting large leakages within the home, providing more insight into water quality, consumption patterns, and insights into how to save water.
The NGO Development Workshop Angola (DWA) was awarded an M4D Utilities Seed Grant to trial the mobile-based monitoring of community water points in the informal settlements of Huambo, Angola. In Huambo, low-income households rely primarily on water from handpumps and solar-powered boreholes, which provide unreliable service due the limited water supply and the lack of a monitoring sytem to know when breakages occured. To address this, DWA piloted the VerAgua programme, including SeeSaw’s SeeTell, a system for water point caretakers to report water service status by making free ‘missed calls’ to numbers corresponding to variable status, and SeeView, a mobile application for field staff update the water point status in a database. These mobile tools aimed to collect data to raise arewarness on the poor service levels and create greater accountability.
While the pilot faced challenges getting caretakers to reliably report water status due to a variety of external factos, the Government and USAID have been supportive of continuing and expanding the service. DWA and SeeSAw are continiuing to use mobile technology to monitor 150 water points in Huambo and the capital of Luanda. The need for continuous and improved training of caretakers was addressed by increasing the provision of technical skills and educating caretakers on the importance of reporting to the overall functioning of the system.
DWA has also expanded its scope to implement a community-run sanitation monitoring project. The project will promote a change in hygiene and sanitation behaviours through participatory methodologies, improving hygeine education alongside improvements in water supply. Water committees or sanitation clubs will also be organised in local schools to improve the use of sanitation and water facilities in schools and to send hygiene and sanitation messages to families.
The Mobile for Development Utilities Innovation Fund is currently open for applications. We greatly encourage applications from service providers or mobile operators interested in leveraging mobile technologies to improve access to improved water services. Please visit our website for more information and apply by 16 April, 2017.
Mobile for Development Utilities is currently funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and supported by the GSMA and its members.
