Reviewing the use of monitoring tools for rural water pumps in the Global South

Abstract

The establishment of improved water supplies is one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Many water schemes have provided wells and pumps to enhance the life of local communities across Africa. However, in numerous cases, these schemes fail over time due to a lack of established maintenance regimes and trained staff. One of the ways that resilience might be improved is the introduction of remote monitoring systems to allow the detection of failed pumps and enable predictions of when a pump might fail without intervention, thus allowing the associated loss of service to be minimised, ensuring that the community is not without safe drinking water for extended periods. This paper pulls together the knowledge and details of remote monitoring systems that are available in the field today and provides a coherent knowledge base of the work that is being done. The paper also reviews how each system is compiled, along with their strengths and weaknesses, and provides background knowledge that should encourage future research and development in the field. Whether such systems, with their reliance on microprocessors, are appropriate for the Global South is discussed.