<
https://theconversation.com/handpumps-bring-water-to-rural-african-communities-but-many-are-broken-study-models-how-best-to-maintain-them-278625>
"In rural sub-Saharan Africa, access to clean drinking water often depends on a
simple technology: the handpump.
These manually operated systems pump water out of the ground for more than 184
million people. Yet despite their importance, research has found that at least
100,000 handpumps out of the 500,000 to 1.3 million in use in sub-Saharan
Africa are not functioning.
This is a hidden crisis. It means rural people are not getting water, not
because new infrastructure is needed and not being built, but because existing
water systems aren’t working.
We are a team of operations management researchers who look at how
organisations make decisions when they don’t have the time, the money, or the
staff to do everything at once. Our research focuses on how nongovernmental
organisations (NGOs) manage and maintain rural water systems.
Our latest research investigated how maintenance can be designed to keep water
flowing more reliably when resources and information are limited.
We worked closely with three NGOs in Ethiopia, Malawi and the Central African
Republic to find out how they maintain their water pump systems. In total, we
looked at 3,584 handpumps across the three countries and found that each NGO
had a different way of maintaining its water pumps."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
