How can remote water pumps be monitored?

Friday 29th Jan 2016, 3.28pm

Water pumps are a lifeline for many communities in developing countries. But how can you monitor them all to know whether they’re in working order? And can you collect data based on pump usage to provide useful insights into community health? Water is essential for life. So when your only source of safe water is from a water pump you grow to depend on it. If it broke then you’d have to walk further, or go thirsty. With so many water pumps so vital to so many vulnerable communities in developing countries Dr David Clifton explains how the work they’re doing seeks to find a way of monitoring large numbers of water pumps, using smartphones. And with the huge volumes of data collected, can they spot patterns that give tell-tale signals that other things aren’t going right in the community?