Water Challenges and Information Technologies in Egypt Egypt Water Hackathon October, 2011

Working through local partners in Egypt and other countries around the world, the World Bank is supporting an unusual collaboration to address one of world’s major challenges— the use and management of water through technology.

What is a “Hackathon?” The spirit of a hackathon is for technology experts to meet and collaboratively build programs and applications centered around a focused theme. The Water Hackathon is a new problem solving system which draws together the talent and initiative of software developers to solve real world water problems.

Why? The surge in mobile phones is transforming the way people receive and share information, especially in Egypt. Egypt has a mobile penetration rate of over 90% and an impressive talent pool of software developers. Building on existing innovations and its talent pool, Egypt can seize the moment to enable participatory development of new solutions to address challenges around water resource management.

Technology has improved water resource management… … locally The Egyptian Ministry of Administrative Development recently released a mobile service that enables citizens to receive utility bills and court information. New crowdsourcing software developed by IBM called Creek Watch allows cell phone users to help monitor the health of local watershed. A mobile application developed in India allows farmers to save water and time by remotely monitoring and switching on irrigation pumps used for watering crops; the application, now in use in Egypt and Australia, was the Grand Prize winner of Nokia’s Calling All Innovation hackathon event. *** Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a "crowd"), through an open call.contractor

stock.xchng Egypt launches new mobile service

ICT app to protect the watershed and-the-art-of-crowdsourcing/

Technology has improved water resource management… … more examples globally In Liberia, Field Level Operations Watch (FLOW) is a geospatial mobile application that was developed by Water For People. It gives field workers the ability to tag water access points along with information pertinent to water experts. In India, NextDrop provides households with accurate and timely information about local piped water delivery, over cell phones already widely in use. The Rainfall Productivity Calculator, an application built as a hobby by a technology enthusiast, allows citizens to see historical rainfall amounts for their homestead and estimate various crop yields. The Raising the Water Pressure project by an NGO called Daraja enables citizens in Tanzania to monitor and submit complaints regarding the water supply.

Waterpoint Mapping with FLOW

Up to date information on water delivery solution-to-indias-water-supply-problem/

Rain estimates for crop fields through ICT: Rainfall Productivity Calculator

Citizen feedback for public services: Daraja and “Raising the water pressure” Rural waterpoint breaks down Local Government gets the waterpoint fixed Rural Citizen sends SMS to SMS delivered to Daraja Waterpoint database updated SMS forwarded to DWE, Mb. SMS shared with media partners Follow up, clarify

Events and Process Flow Sector Stakeholders, Specialists and Communities define pressing problems Software developers compete to program functional (prototype) solutions Promising prototypes are sponsored for a pilot & full development Before the Hackathon: Working Group Oct. 12., 2011 At the Hackathon: Egypt Hackathon, Oct , 2011 After the Hackathon: Post-Oct. 2011

An example of a water challenge Problem: Inefficiency due to mismatch in bill payment and earning cycles Many customers have difficulty paying high monthly water bills. The key issue is cash-flow: Unsteady incomes make large one-off payments difficult, even if the payments could be made if they were more spread out. Problem likely to increase under new social connections policy

An example of a water solution Example: Develop a new payment option based on self-reported water meter readings: This could solve the inefficient mismatch between earnings and billing cycle. Customer reads meter & sends reading to MWRI via text Billing system creates bill showing debt /credit Bill sent to customer via text message Customer sends payment through mobile cash Customer continues to get water supply Account update MWRI to carry out semi-regular checks of self reported readings

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