Ensuring water safety through digital transformation
Addressing the looming threat of waterborne diseases globally
The demand for clean, safe drinking water to support refugees and displaced populations has surged in recent years, with an alarming 108 million people displaced from their homes in 2022 alone. The SWOT (Safe Water Optimization Tool) is a collaborative initiative of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University (Toronto, Canada) and Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), committed to tackling this urgent issue.
Their mission centers on implementing effective chlorine-based water treatment solutions, tailored to the unique challenges of these environments. They recognize the complexity of determining precise chlorine dosage, considering taste and odor concerns and ensuring household water safety. By providing accessible and sustainable solutions, the organization aims to protect public health and promote resilience in the face of emergencies. Together, they work towards ensuring water remains safe to drink and acceptable for vulnerable communities worldwide.
Confronting core challenges
Humanitarian water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) teams are tasked with delivering safe drinking water to people affected by conflict and natural disasters. This involves rapidly setting up infrastructure and systems to reliably source, treat and distribute water to residents of refugee or internally displaced persons settlements, often comparable in size to small towns.
The systems constructed in the wake of humanitarian crises usually involve supplying water to public tapstands, so people must collect, transport and store water in their homes before consumption. This additional ‘last mile’ of water distribution significantly impacts water safety, yet it remains overlooked in universal guidance for water treatment and quality testing, posing a considerable public health hazard.
World changing digital transformation
In response to this critical gap in water safety for millions of people, a team at York University in Toronto led the way to create the Safe Water Optimization Tool (SWOT)—an innovative web-based platform that helps humanitarian responders optimize water chlorination and ensure water safety during humanitarian emergencies. The SWOT leverages water quality data routinely collected by field teams, applying cutting-edge numerical and machine learning modeling to generate evidence-based and context-specific water chlorination targets. These targets help teams ensure water remains protected and safe to drink up to the point-of-consumption—at any location around the world. The SWOT is built on a user-friendly, low bandwidth web platform that is accessible even in resource-constrained settings.
Its capabilities include:
Helping organizations improve water quality by providing insights into data and identifying problems.
Helping organizations reduce water quality costs by optimizing resources and reducing waste.
Helping organizations comply with water quality regulations.
Helping provide safe drinking water, improving public health.
The SWOT has been deployed by seven humanitarian organizations across nine countries, as part of initiatives aiming to improve the safety of water for 465,000 people. It aspires to become the water safety monitoring and assurance platform of choice in the global humanitarian sector, but the team responsible for it were balancing full-time research roles with developing and scaling the tool. In a bid to amplify the SWOT team's reach, Thoughtworks partnered with them to define a sustainable business model, enhance user experience and service design and broaden the tool's functionalities.
Our partnership
Thoughtworks delivered a primary and secondary research report to support the SWOT team in crafting their strategy and defining their organizational model. The team conducted an in-depth analysis of Service Design and UX Design, compiling a set of recommendations aimed at enhancing numerous user interactions to augment the tool's value and usability. Additionally, Thoughtworks facilitated a series of collaborative working sessions for the team ensuring alignment on the organization's mission, vision, and operational objectives.
This collaborative effort persists, with future endeavors focused on expanding the tool's capabilities to cater to a broader range of user types in the field and supporting the registration of the tool as a Digital Public Good. This designation signifies the tool as an open digital resource accessible to all, intended to empower individuals to enhance their lives and contribute positively to the world.
The Thoughtworks team has helped us implement rigorous design processes and bring user research into product development and has helped us tell our story to the world better. Thoughtworks has been essential in helping to elevate the Safe Water Optimization Tool to become a best-in-class technology product for humanitarian responders.