Over the last years, Akvo has worked with governments and many partners across the globe to introduce and support the introduction of mobile phone based monitoring. As of today Akvo FLOW is used in 37 countries, and our partners have conducted over 1,150,000 surveys to improve decision-making in the fields of water and sanitation, food and agriculture, energy, health, education, forestry, fishery and conservation.
Worldwide usage and spread of 1,150,000 surveys that used Akvo FLOW.
From all surveys, around 60% relate to the water sector. Many of the partners that use our tools are willing to share data that is not private or sensitive, so it can support the common good. This has enabled us to develop the map below that shows key water functionality data for 126,251 water points that are being monitored with our tools. We sincerely thank all partners and governments for willing to share this key data publicly.
Water functionality map, displaying the functionality status of 126,251 water points.
The full online map can be found here.
The data in this map has been compiled from 65 large-scale programs and national monitoring efforts Akvo is supporting across the globe at this moment. For every water point we have been able to share:
- Geo-location
- Instance url of the partner (so the source)
- Submission date
- Type of water point
- Functionality/status of water point
- Picture of the water point (if available)
Out of the 126.251 water points that have been displayed on this map:
- 85785 water points are functional (68%)
- 24930 water points are non-functional (20%)
- 12334 water points are functional, but with problems (10%)
- 3202 water points do not have functionality data (2%)
As many partners are using different indicators to measure WASH services, it has been hard to aggregate richer information across boundaries. For the map above we also had to clean some data sets to make them fit in the three main functionality categories as best as possible.
We are working hard with all our global partners to get formal approval to openly share the underlying data sets over the next months, so it can be accessed, analysed and used by all interested individuals. We’re planning to do this in line with the Water Point Data Exchange (WPDx) standard that will be launched in the USA in May. You can find more information on that initiative here.
It is too early to draw conclusions, but these efforts of collecting and sharing data openly at scale will, we believe, help all of us to do a better job and move towards safe water and sanitation for all.
Peter van der Linde is a co-founder and regional director of Akvo, based in Singapore
Josje Spierings is a project manager of Akvo, based in Amsterdam
Annabelle Poelert is a project assistant of Akvo, based in Amsterdam