Village Water Intelligence Dashboard
In village environments, water access is a game of chance. Families struggle to make informed decisions about their water usage and source. Local water managers, who are responsible for making sure the communities have water, generally have to make decisions without reliable information on tank levels or community demand. The result? Dry taps, wasted resources, and growing frustration.
We’re a team of students in the Next Generation Data Action (NGDA) Challenge, and we’re building a solution: the Village Water Intelligence Dashboard. Our goal is to transform water management from guesswork into a data-driven, community-powered process that ensures every drop counts.
What We Discovered
Our research revealed three critical gaps in rural water management:
- No real-time visibility: Managers have no current data on water level in tanks or sources, so it is not possible to predict shortages.
- No demand forecasting: Village populations change and seasons change, but water delivery remains constant, hence creating mismatches between supply and requirement.
- No community connection: People are kept in the dark regarding water supply, leaving them to make an educated guess on when to draw water or whether to save.
These shortages lead to inefficiencies, long queues, and health risks when poor households resort to unsafe water substitutes.
Our Solution: A Smart, Accessible Dashboard & App
The Village Water Intelligence Dashboard educates local governments, water operators, and private providers with simple-to-understand, actionable data that informs communities. Here’s how:
- Real-time monitoring: Simple, low-cost sensors track water levels in tanks and sources, displaying current availability on an easy dashboard.
- Smart foresight: By analyzing previous usage and village sizes, the system estimates supply time and detects impending shortages.
- Preemptive notices: Operators are signaled when action is required like filling tanks, repairing pipes, or reducing use.
- Community engagement: Villagers are alerted by SMS or a plain app, which informs them of water timings, conservation needs, or outages.
- Supplier assistance: Private water firms can observe live shortage levels, enabling rapid, targeted deliveries to underserved groups.
This creates an enclosed feedback loop, illuminating everyone.
Why It Matters
Water availability shouldn’t be a daily unknown. Our dashboard offers:
- Reliability: Prevents surprise shortfalls by predicting requirements.
- Efficiency: Reduces wastage by aligning supply and demand.
- Trust: Establishes confidence with open communication between managers and residents.
- Equity: Serves underserved regions, ensuring equal access.
What’s Next
We are in the initial stages of realizing this vision. In the next two months, our team will:
- Gather field research on existing water management systems in rural communities.
- Design a simple dashboard interface for use by local authorities.
- Design an SMS alert system for villagers to receive timely information.
- Explore the use of historical data to enhance predictive models for better planning.
- Collaborate with stakeholders, government agencies, NGOs, and water companies, to develop and test our prototype.