Udbredelsen af mobiltelefoner kan udnyttes til at effektivisere vedligeholdelsen af vandpumper, vurderer britiske teknikere – i dag kan nedbrud (og de er hyppige) tage op til en måned at reparere.
Rural communities across Africa may soon benefit from improved water supplies thanks to mobile phone technology, reports BBC online Friday.
UK researchers have developed data transmitters that fit inside hand pumps and send text messages if the devices break down.
The “smart” hand pumps will be trialled shortly in 70 villages in Kenya, according to the Journal of Hydroinformatics.
Hundreds of millions of people across rural Africa depend on hand pumps for their water supplies.
But it is estimated that around one third are broken at any given moment. Often located in remote areas, repairs can sometimes take up to a month.
One of the big changes in Africa in recent years has been the expansion of mobile phone networks. It is now estimated that more people in Sub-Saharan Africa have access to these networks than have access to improved water supplies.
So researchers at Oxford University have developed the idea of using the availability of mobile networks to signal when hand pumps are no longer working. They have built and tested the idea of implanting a mobile data transmitter into the handle of the pump.
The Kenya experiment will use long lasting batteries but the research team hopes to develop more sustainable ways of powering the transmitters.
Another larger trial due to take place in Zambia later this year will look at renewable resources such as kinetic (bevægelses) energy from the motion of the handle and solar power. Yet, another challenge is the threat of theft and vandalism.
