Water For People and Akvo to co-develop FLOW monitoring tool

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.

Monitoring: Water for People launches Android app

US NGO Water for People has launched a visual technology called FLOW, Field Level Operations Watch.

Using Android cell phone technology and Google Earth software, FLOW provides anyone on the Internet access to data for projects supported by Water For People. This visual open-source data monitoring database was developed by Gallatin Systems.

Field data about water points or sanitation systems can be collected by community members, project staff etc. with an Android phone and uploaded on to Google Maps and Google Earth. Flow integrates GPS tagging and a photo for each entry. Users can review and edit data right on their Android phone in the field.

FLOW will focus on these key indicators:

• Is the water point or sanitation solution being used and functioning?
• How many people have access to water and sanitation in the area?
• Are the services able to expand with the community?
• Is the quantity and quality of water meeting the needs of the community?
• Are sufficient tariffs being collected to ensure ongoing operation, maintenance, repair and eventual replacement?

Local data can be merged with other datasets.

For instance, in Malawi, he [Dru Borden of Gallatin Systems], says, UNICEF has already done a survey of all 54,000 water points in the country. You can download that to the phone, and have FLOW give you GPS directions to each site to check up on, pesky missing street signs be damned. If you compress the surveys, they are so small you can fit millions on a microSD card. That means you don’t actually need a data connection everywhere you go–just somewhere to power the phone.

Once you get back to cell service, and upload the data, it runs on Google’s app engine. The data can be stored in the cloud on a variety of services, so FLOW will be essentially free for the average organization to run, once they buy the smartphones. That equipment cost is the catch. Buying the phones is certainly the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of FLOW, but Borden estimates the unit cost will be about $99 with the release of a cheaper Android handset in Kenya within a year. Right now his firm has been testing it out on Droids and other more expensive models.

A demo of Flow is available on Google Earth at watermapmonitordev.appspot.com

Flow should be posted on Google’s Android Market app store sometime in November 2010.

See below a video interview with Water for People’s CEO Ned Breslin

Other similar new mapping tools include:

• h2.0 Monitoring Service to Inform and Empower Initiativelaunched by the h2.0 consortium
• Water Point Mapper developed by WaterAid

Source: Water for People ; Alex Goldmark, Fast Company, 26 Oct 2010

Arsenic removal saves lives in India

Small activated alumina units treat tube-well water.

In response to the [arsenic] crisis [in West Bengal, India], Dr. Arun Deb, a member of the Water For People Board of Directors, initiated the organization’s work in [...] in 1996 by supporting arsenic-removal efforts and working to develop arsenic-mitigation technologies appropriate for use in rural villages.

Water For People soon partnered with Bengal Engineering and Science University, which developed domestic and well-head arsenic-removal units using activated alumina.

The in-home domestic units consist of two chambers. The upper chamber houses the pretreated activated alumina and the lower stores treated water. For ease of handling (particularly for media regeneration and restoration), the media is enclosed in an impervious nylon bag with a pervious bottom. The media bags are easily removed for offsite regeneration or restoration.

The wellhead units consist of a stainless steel column that is 12 inches (30.5 centimeters) in diameter and 7.2 feet (2.2 meters) in height. Water flows down through a 51-inch (1.3-m.) layer of activated alumina and an 8-inch-thick (20.3-cm.-thick) bed of gravel. The filter media is replaced or restored every eight to 12 months. One wellhead unit can serve from 200 to 300 families.

Effective, inexpensive removal

These simple technologies are highly effective at removing arsenic, relatively inexpensive (approximately US $2,000 [93,721 rupees] for each wellhead unit, including training) and easy to maintain [and] sustainable.

To date, Water For People has financed the installation of 103 of these units, improving the quality of life for an estimated 20,600 people.

[...] Media regeneration, arsenic disposal

Another important consideration for Water For People is effectively dealing with the captured arsenic in a safe and environmentally sensitive fashion. The activated alumina filter media is regenerated annually and sometimes more frequently depending on the arsenic and iron content of the source water.

With the assistance of Bengal Engineering and Science University, a central regeneration facility has been established north of Kolkata in one of the rural areas most affected by arsenic-contaminated groundwater. The facility is being turned over to a private enterprise that is intended to be self-sustaining.

The regeneration process involves transferring the spent activated alumina to a stainless steel drum that is mounted horizontally on an axis to allow for rotation of the drum.

Source: John Kayser, Water Technology Magazine, September 2008