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Across the world, it is estimated that over three quarters of a billion people are without access to safe drinking water.
For many rural communities, such as Kyuso in Eastern Kenya, maintaining a reliable source of clean water throughout the year remains a challenge.
They rely on handpumps to get water from wells, often painstakingly dug by hand.
Keeping these handpumps working is vital, but all too often getting word to a skilled mechanic proves difficult.
Around one-third of all handpumps are broken at any one time.
Pumps can remain broken for weeks, months, or even indefinitely.
Families are then forced to use alternative sources, which are often unsafe to drink, or a long way away.
Our team at Oxford University has developed a simple electronic device, which employs an accelerometer to record movement.
Once fitted into the pump handle, it can monitor the amount of water being pumped.
It then transmits this information via SMS to a central server.
Using the open-source software Frontline, the data from the modem is broken down, and added to a database.
The data may then be accessed from the office in Nairobi, or via our website.
Here, one can find a map with the location of all the pumps, as well as a graph that displays water usage over time.
If we detect that a pump is not being used, this might mean that it is broken; a mechanic can then be immediately dispatched to investigate and repair the pump.
Future plans for the system are to trial it at scale; by analysing the data from initial trials, we will identify patterns of usage and modes of failure.
This could allow us to predict pump problems before they occur; this will lead to cheaper, faster repairs, ensuring that communities have continued and reliable access to clean water.