The current issue: Accessing Clean and Reliable Water Supplies
Access to reliable and clean water still persists as one of the biggest challenges to a staggering 844 million people across the planet. A further 2.3 billion people have no access to waste water treatment, resulting in exposure to life threatening diseases and infections without the required infrastructure to treat the sick.
Children and the elderly are most at risk, with water and waste water illnesses being a large leading cause in these demographics’ death statistics. As this is the case and as the global population continues to increase, smart, efficient and robust solutions must be developed and deployed to combat this widespread issue.
These issues are only made more prominent by times of distress and disaster, something the Philippines have to handle on a yearly basis due to the annual tsunami season that leads to existing infrastructure being destroyed. This issue calls for a solution that is cheap and easy to install whilst also being able to withstand the harsh climatic conditions and capable of being easily and quickly replaced. This is the solution we designed and aim to deliver through the IMPHORAA project.
IMPHORAA’s goal
The IMPHORAA project aims to give rural communities in the Philippines access to solar energy that is both cheap and reliable. According to the Philippine statistic authority, more than 3% of people in the Philippines have no access to power of any sort, while 30% are experiencing rolling blackouts or “brownouts,” as the Filipinos call the sudden voltage drop from its normal levels that is highly disrupting for any day to day activity. By developing and rolling out easy to install and maintain solar power systems, the IMPORAA consortium aspires to give these people access to electricity and therefore the means to pump clean water for their needs.
As well as this, the project aims to develop and deliver cool box systems for food storage, which can be powered by the installed solar systems. Other consumer electronics can also be sourced from the project, giving clients access to lights, televisions and radios if they wish. This will elevate quality of life on a huge scale. It will also allow people to pay fair prices for power, with no installation fee and the client simply paying for the power that they use once everything has been installed.
This will introduce clean and reliable water to rural communities who need it the most, providing them with potable water without concern for its sanitary quality alongside being able to clean utensils to further reduce chances of fatal diseases taking any more lives.
As you can see in the image below, the IMPHORAA project has already given rural communities in Madagascar access to water towers, alongside the means to pump the water to convenient places, and will soon deploy the means of water transportation to communities in the Philippines.
Figure 1: Water tower installation from Nanoè (A main member of the consortium)
This project is supported by Innovate UKs Energy Catalyst Programme (funding by the Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office through their Transforming Energy Access Programme) and UK aid and was awarded as a “subsidy” under the UK International Obligations for Subsidy Control and delivered under Grant 90935 from Innovate UK.
