Abstract
AbstractThe presence of the mobile phone network in rural areas where there is little other infrastructure has opened up the prospect of automatically monitoring rural water systems, something previously possible only in person and perhaps only on foot. The technology to monitor these systems continues to develop: basic systems are now leaving research and being implemented in operational WASH programs; machine learning is making pump failure prediction possible. With the move from the previous infrastructure‐focused community management paradigm, to a service‐delivery approach to rural water, remote monitoring has salience with its potential to inform professional maintenance services. This is not without cost. To justify its use in rural water service delivery remote monitoring must generate benefits for service providers: (1) it must be integrated into management systems, and help redesign them; (2) it must contribute to increases in performance that produce real improvement in outcomes for water users; (3) it must open up new transparent sources of funding previously unavailable to the rural water sector. If remote monitoring can do these three things it has a role to play in achieving SDG 6.1; if not it will join the list of development techno‐fixes that failed to make an impact despite the best of intentions.This article is categorized under: Human Water > Human Water
Highlights
Understanding and improving the sustainability of rural water supplies has been the subject of academic study for decades
Many of the problems described a generation earlier (Blum & Feachem, 1983; Blum, Feachem, Huttly, Kirkwood, & Emeh, 1987; Esrey, Feachem, & Hughes, 1985; White, Bradley, & White, 1972) still persist to this day. Against this backdrop of sluggish progress in the sector, this review looks at recent developments in remote monitoring of rural water systems, and asks what role they may have in improving the sustainability of these systems, and by extension increasing the water security of those who rely on them
Remote automatic monitoring of rural water systems may be emerging from its infancy, but has yet to be taken up at significant scale
Summary
Understanding and improving the sustainability of rural water supplies has been the subject of academic study for decades. THOMSON spending US$4.5 billion a year on water supply and sanitation programs in developing countries (United Nations, 1990) During this time the focus was on building infrastructure, what came to be known as “improved” water sources, the humble handpump being the archetypal improved source that could provide a rural community with groundwater for their daily needs. While there are examples of effective private sector involvement, as there were—and still are—with community management, Foster et al (2019) estimated a mere one-in-four handpumps broken at any one time This represents a slight improvement from a decade earlier but hardly evidence to suggest that we are on track to deliver “universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all” by 2030, the Sustainable Development Goal for water set in 2015. The issues around remote monitoring, and whether it is part of the solution or a technological distraction, can apply to any form of water supply infrastructure
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