In March 2012, Water for People (USA) and Akvo (Netherlands) entered an agreement to further develop FLOW, a field-level monitoring tool.
Akvo will lead on product development and support while Water For People will lead in product field-testing and monitoring functionality. The product has been rebranded as Akvo FLOW. The software code supporting Akvo FLOW will be published under an open source AGPL3 license.
FLOW – Field level Operations Watch, brings together handheld data collection with Android mobile phone technology, a web-based dashboard and visual mapping using Google Maps and Google Earth software.
FLOW was originally developed by Water for People and Gallatin Systems. Since its introduction in 2010, FLOW has been used by Water for People and others in 17 countries. In 2011, the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) used FLOW to map 10,000 water points in Liberia [1]. The IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre has used FLOW to monitor water services in three districts in Ghana [2].
Akvo’s chairman and co-founder Jeroen van der Sommen is now leading the development of the Akvo FLOW business [3].
[1] New Mobile Technology Helps Liberia Map Rural Water Points, Informs Strategy, WSP, 22 Jun 2011
[2] The use of FLOW for monitoring WASH service delivery in Ghana, IRC, 22 May 2012 ; Ghana shares experience of monitoring sustainable services using FLOW technology at 4th Africa Water Week, IRC/Triple-S,
[3] Mark Charmer, Jeroen van der Sommen on leading the Akvo FLOW business, Akvo Blog, 03 May 2011
Related news: Monitoring: new tools meet demand for more transparency in the water sector, E-Source, 05 Dec 2011
Related web sites:
Source: Water for People, 6 Mar 2012 ; Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson , Akvo Blog, 06 Mar 2012
