EIACP Programme Centre on Hygiene, Sanitation, Sewage Treatment Systems and Technology

Transforming urban landscapes of India

How ICTs can ensure the sustainable management of water and sanitation

Today, we are facing unprecedented challenges in ensuring that everyone has access to sustainably managed water and sanitation services.

In 2017, out of a global population of around 7.5 billion people, some 1.8 billion people use a contaminated source of drinking water, 2.4 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation facilities, and over 840,000 people die every year from preventable water-borne diseases.

No person or community can function properly without access to safe water and sanitation. Beyond the obvious need to quench one’s thirst, how can people stay clean, maintain a toilet, manage menstruation, run a business, a hospital or a school without a supply of clean and safe water? The wider impacts of this crisis are profound.Read More....

Unlocking the Potential of Information Communications Technology to Improve Water and Sanitation Services

Since the first Short Message Service (SMS) text was sent in 1992, the proliferation of mobile technology and its derivative uses has been both massive and extremely rapid. According to a recent Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA) report, in 2014, 52 percent of all global mobilen money deployments took place in sub-Saharan Africa and 82 percent of Africans had access to Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications coverage compared to 63 percent who had access to improved water supply and 32 percent to electricity. Read More...

ICT & WASH - A synthesis of conference presentations for mobile technology in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector

ICT is quickly changing relationships in the WASH sector. Distances are becoming shorter and ICTs are now being used to facilitate the measurement and monitoring of interventions with data from customers, operators, and government. Using these new rich sources of data promises to guide equitable decision making for WASH services. Read more....

Can mobile data improve rural water institutions in Africa?

Institutional transformations are required if Africa is to deliver the universal Human Right to Water to the 275 million rural people currently without improved water services.1 Improving the reliability of one million handpumps that inadequately deliver drinking water to over 200 million rural Africans will be a major contribution to translating water rights into measureable results. Read More.....

Mobile data tools for improving information flow in WASH: Lessons from three field pilots

The application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support the delivery of water and sanitation services is a growing area of interest in the WASH sector. To study how these tools might be incorporated into existing management structures, we conducted field pilots of a mobile phone based application for transmitting water quality data in three distinct water supply structures: a large provincial utility in Vietnam, rural NGO operations in Cambodia, and district health authorities in Mozambique. Read more....

Changing Relationships: ICT to Improve Water Governance

ICT is quickly changing relationships, facilitating the measurement and monitoring of interventions, and enabling practitioners at a local level to use evidence to guide decision making for the equitable and sustainable extension of WASH services. Despite this promising outlook, several challenges exist to achieve the full potential of ICT. Read more....

SANITATION APPS: A brief overview of sanitation app developments

Mobile phone and web-based ICT applications are increasingly being developed to support the development of WASH services. While there has not yet been much innovation in the sanitation sector, a lot can be learned and transferred from recent developments in the water sector. Apps have the potential to support significant improvements in the monitoring and planning of sanitation projects, programmes and policies. Read more....

Children, ICT and Development capturing the potential, meeting the challenges

This report explores the ways in which ICTs can contribute to meeting child-focused development goals. The diffusion of ICTs has been highly uneven, and it is clear that digital divides not only trace but can also further deepen existing social divides, between income-rich and income-poor, between urban and rural dwellers, between women and men, and girls and boys. Read more....

Systematic review on what works, what does not work and why of implementation of mobile health (mHealth) projects in Africa

mHealth in Africa is an innovative approach to delivering health services. In this fast-growing technological field, research opportunities include assessing implications of scaling-up mHealth projects, evaluating cost-effectiveness, and monitoring impacts on the overall health system. Read more....