FLOW: Where Mobile Tech and Water Meet
January 19, 2011
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Roughly 13 percent of the world’s population still lacks access to a regular supply of clean drinking water, and monitoring current water pumps and sanitation points is an important part of making sure that areas that have gained access to clean water don’t lose it. Water for People is a non-profit organization that monitors water and sanitation points in the developing world; last February, the organization began to investigate how mobile technology could help their work and from this, FLOW was born.
FLOW (Field Level Operations Watch) is an open-source, Android application that allows field workers to use mobile phones to document how well water pumps and sanitation points in the developing world are functioning, then transmit that data to create an online tagged map of target regions.
Developed as a branching survey, FLOW collects data so that researchers and development workers can track and analyze trends over time. Written in Java, the application allows fieldworkers to collect data on the state of water pumps in rural areas and immediately transmit that information to an online map so that there are real-time data updates. Developer Dru Borden of Gallatin Systems, who designed FLOW, says that the system was designed to work on versions 1.6 and greater for Android phones, as FLOW requires GPS and photo-tagging capabilities.
Initially launched with a small pilot in Honduras last May, FLOW’s first big test was in Rwanda. According to Kerri Kugler, senior manager of programmatic data at Water for People, Rwanda was chosen as the second pilot because it would be both large-scale and would test how well the system could work in areas of limited network coverage. After the pilot proved the system worked, FLOW began its official roll out in October to seven more countries in which Water for People operates (Malawi, Guatemala, Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, and India).
FLOW is Water for People’s first foray into using mobile technology in their data collection work. Kugler explains, “It very quickly came to be clear that mobile technology was the way to go, [...] the wonderful thing about mobile devices and the Android platform was that it was very open, nonproprietary and very affordable.”
She explains that open-source mobile technology was not only chosen because of the ease of recording, transmitting, and analyzing data, but also because by putting information online, it creates transparency in the monitoring process. She says, “It really comes down to a question of monitoring your work and being transparent. We really believe that it's important to monitor your work and make sure what you're doing is actually working - and if it's not working, then to find out why and make changes to your program.” As such, having real-time data on water pump functionality ensures that negative trends are noticed more quickly than traditional hand-recorded methods.
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