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1 Mink, A.; Hoque, B. A.; Khanam, S.; van Halem, D. 2019. Mobile crowd participation to root small-scale piped water supply systems in India and Bangladesh. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 9(1):139-151. [doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/washdev.2019.117]
Water supply ; Pipes ; Small scale systems ; Participatory approaches ; Water quality ; Arsenic ; Contamination ; Sustainability ; Drinking water ; Tube wells ; Households ; Socioeconomic environment ; Smartphones ; Monitoring ; Deltas / India / Bangladesh / Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta / Bhojpur / Khulna / Chittagong
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H049309)
https://iwaponline.com/washdev/article-pdf/9/1/139/583055/washdev0090139.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049309.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049309.pdf
(0.51 MB) (520 KB)
In the arsenic-contaminated Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta in India and Bangladesh, small-scale piped water supply seems a promising way to provide safe drinking water to households in the region. The use of smartphone applications can support monitoring of the system and enhance local engagement and empowerment. In this paper the scope for mobile crowd participation as a research and monitoring tool for piped water supply systems in Bihar, India and in Khulna and Chittagong, Bangladesh is investigated. In these areas, the use of smartphones and internet access are growing rapidly and smartphone applications would enable real-time water quality monitoring, payment of water bills, awareness creation, and a dialogue between the end-user and the water supplier. To identify the relevance and acceptability of piped water supply and smartphone monitoring, four surveys with potential end-users were conducted. Based on these surveys we conclude that in the investigated areas there is a desire for piped water systems, that households already own smartphones with internet access, and that there is an interest in smartphone monitoring. The enabling environment to deploy mobile crowd participation for piped water system monitoring stimulates further research towards an investigation of potential functionalities and the actual development of such an application.
2 Pattinson, N. B.; Taylor, J.; Dickens, Chris W. S.; Graham, P. M. 2023. Digital innovation in citizen science to enhance water quality monitoring in developing countries. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute (IWMI). 37p. (IWMI Working Paper 210) [doi: https://doi.org/10.5337/2024.201]
Digital innovation ; Citizen science ; Water quality ; Monitoring ; Developing countries ; Freshwater ecosystems ; Water resources ; Water management ; Decision support ; Community involvement ; Data collection ; Digital technology ; Sensors ; Databases ; Smartphones ; Mobile applications ; Innovation adoption ; Big data ; Sustainable Development Goals ; Goal 6 Clean water and sanitation ; Parameters ; Mitigation
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: IWMI Record No: H052509)
(1.02 MB)
Freshwater systems are disproportionately adversely affected by the ongoing, global environmental crisis. The effective and efficient water resource conservation and management necessary to mitigate the crisis requires monitoring data, especially on water quality. This is recognized by Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, particularly indicator 6.3.2., which requires all UN member states to measure and report the ‘proportion of water bodies with good ambient water quality’. However, gathering sufficient data on water quality is reliant on data collection at spatial and temporal scales that are generally outside the capacity of institutions using conventional methods. Digital technologies, such as wireless sensor networks and remote sensing, have come to the fore as promising avenues to increase the scope of data collection and reporting. Citizen science (which goes by many names, e.g., participatory science or community-based monitoring) has also been earmarked as a powerful mechanism to improve monitoring. However, both avenues have drawbacks and limitations. The synergy between the strengths of modern technologies and citizen science presents an opportunity to use the best features of each to mitigate the shortcomings of the other. This paper briefly synthesizes recent research illustrating how smartphones, sometimes in conjunction with other sensors, present a nexus point method for citizen scientists to engage with and use sophisticated modern technology for water quality monitoring. This paper also presents a brief, non-exhaustive research synthesis of some examples of current technological upgrades or innovations regarding smartphones in citizen science water quality monitoring in developing countries and how these can assist in objective, comprehensive, and improved data collection, management and reporting. While digital innovations are being rapidly developed worldwide, there remains a paucity of scientific and socioeconomic validation of their suitability and usefulness within citizen science. This perhaps contributes to the fact that the uptake and upscaling of smartphone-assisted citizen science continues to underperform compared to its potential within water resource management and SDG reporting. Ultimately, we recommend that more rigorous scientific research efforts be dedicated to exploring the suitability of digital innovations in citizen science in the context of developing countries and SDG reporting.
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