The Problem:
“The world is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal of cutting in half the number of people without access to clean water by 2015, but progress in uneven; most of the improvements are in China and India, with Sub-Saharan Africa lagging (37 percent of people without access to clean water live there).” – World Bank (http://water.worldbank.org/water/topics/water-supply)
"In remote areas of Africa women travel miles each day to collect water for their families. It's dangerous and debilitating." - Water.org
Providing safe drinking water to people who lack access to clean water requires locating areas where those people live and mapping nearby accessible water sources. Attributes of those water sources such as geographic location, distance to the source, accessibility (dirt road, walkways), safety of the person carrying water (physical and violence), suitability of the water for drinking, reliability (limit of use, how long will the supply last?, seasonal vs perennial), and cost of water. Alternative sources (lakes, rivers, water trucks, community wells) and their attributes are also equally important when making decisions to help improve water access issues.
The Solution:
The proposed solution will provide a web, smart phone, and text message based solution for anyone to collect data about accessible water and submit to a central Geographic Information System (GIS) database. The data will be made available for viewing, editing, and analyzing through open Web Map Services [1]and Web Feature Services[2] for easy integration with other websites and applications. The solution should have the following features and functionality.
Use of the Solution:
Organizations such as World Bank, water.org, and many other organizations working towards meeting Millennium Development Goal (of cutting in half the number of people without access to clean water by 2015) will greatly benefit from a global database of water access points and their attributes. Such information can greatly help identify, prioritize and monitor projects geared to improve clean water access to millions of people. Since these data are available as Web Services, those who are building mapping, analytical and, reporting tools can easily integrate these into their current software and tools. One example of such mapping application is ‘World Bank Improved Water Source Access’ map that shows the urban, rural and total percent of population with access to improved water sources[3]. Data collected using this Solution could be used to overlay on top of the ‘World Bank Improved Water Source Access’ map to highlight areas that need immediate attention.
[1] A Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol for serving georeferenced map images over the Internet that are generated by a map server using data from a GIS database.
[2] A Web Feature Service (WFS) provides an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls.
[3] http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=f949430bd4554f38aab7d4518e854982
Access to an improved water source refers to the percentage of the population with reasonable access to an adequate amount of water from an improved source, such as a household connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected well or spring, and rainwater collection. Unimproved sources include vendors, tanker trucks, and unprotected wells and springs. Reasonable access is defined as the availability of at least 20 liters a person a day from a source within one kilometer of the dwelling.
World Bank can use the data collected from this application to prioritize the water access improvement projects. Organizations such as water.org can use the data from this solution to identify areas where they need to focus first for providing safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries.
Cellphone/smartphone penetration for those who capture data in the field.
http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=f949430bd4554f38aab7d4518e854982
World Bank Improved Water Source Access
This temporal map shows the urban, rural and total percent of population with access to improved water sources.
Description
Access to an improved water source refers to the percentage of the population with reasonable access to an adequate amount of water from an improved source, such as a household connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected well or spring, and rainwater collection. Unimproved sources include vendors, tanker trucks, and unprotected wells and springs. Reasonable access is defined as the availability of at least 20 liters a person a day from a source within one kilometer of the dwelling.
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