Water Challenges and Information
Technologies in Egypt
Egypt Water Hackathon
October, 2011
Working through local partners in Egypt and other countries
around the world, theWorld 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.
Egypt launches new mobile service
stock.xchng
ICT app to protect the watershed
http://www.experiencestrategy.org/2011/07/creek-watchand-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
http://flowliberia.appspot.com/SummaryMap.html
Up to date information on water delivery
http://www.adityakumarnayak.com/2011/nextdrop-org-innovative-
Rain estimates for crop fields through ICT:
Rainfall Productivity Calculator
Citizen feedback for public services:
Daraja and “Raising the water pressure”
Follow up, clarify
Rural waterpoint
breaks down
http://www.daraja.org/our-work/rtwp
Rural Citizen
sends SMS to
15440
SMS delivered
to Daraja
Local Government gets the
waterpoint fixed
SMS shared with
media partners
Waterpoint
database updated
SMS forwarded to
DWE, Mb.
Events and Process Flow
Before the Hackathon:
Working Group
Oct. 12., 2011
At the Hackathon:
Egypt Hackathon,
Oct. 21-22, 2011
After the Hackathon:
Post-Oct. 2011
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
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:
Customer reads meter & sends
reading to MWRI via text
Billing system creates
bill showing debt /credit
Bill sent to customer
via text message
MWRI to carry out semi-regular
checks of self reported readings
Customer continues to get
water supply
•
Account update
Customer sends payment
through mobile cash
This could solve the inefficient mismatch between earnings and billing cycle.
Thank You