DELTAP

Project DELTAP aims to reduce arsenic contaminant exposure of drinking water for households by combining in-house Small-scale Piped Water Supply and active end-user participation through mobile crowd participation (MCP) in ‘Do it yourself laboratories’ in India and Bangladesh.

Challenges 

Arsenic-contaminated groundwater causes serious health risks affecting millions of people living in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta. Mitigation attempts for this unresolved problem have taught critical success factors to be: true local embedding (social, technical and economical), adaptability and dynamics.

Water supply in the GBM Delta is predominantly organized through the use of scattered household hand-pumps, where the water safety is un-controlled, leading to contaminant exposure, particularly for the poorest. A certain degree of centralization is desired from a water quality perspective, specifically for identification of the safest water source and post-implementation monitoring. Selection of safe, arsenic-free aquifers is seriously hampered by the high spatial variability in arsenic contamination levels in the shallow subsurface of the GBM Delta (Acharyya et al., 2000; Shah, 2008, 2010).

Centralized water supply through Small-scale Piped Water Supply (SPWS; IRC, 1981, Ahmed, 2002, Trifunovic, 2002, WHO, 2005) offers crucial advantages over other technological interventions, as it:

• Targets the safest source in the area

• Provides a degree of centralization (<100 households) for water quality control and treatment

• Provides in-house or courtyard tap connections, which are socially-economically desirable

• Limits the number of (re-)contamination events between water collection and consumption

Small-scale Piped Water Supply  

SPWS combines the attractiveness of socially/economically feasible tap connections with smart targeting of safest sources, centralized treatment and end-user inclusion. 
The character of SPWS matches the dynamic urbanizing regional context. However, it also requires fundamental understanding of interacting social and technical conditions, guaranteeing rootedness in site-specific contexts.

Safe source selection  

For the selection of arsenic-free aquifers it is of paramount importance to understand the driving mechanisms behind the heterogeneous arsenic accumulation. These heterogeneities are suggested to be governed by the alluvial stratigraphy and geomorphological heterogeneity in the aquifer space (Donselaar, 2014), and can be recognized by pointbar formations in the delta landscape. The construction of predictive groundwater models that pinpoint locations for safe source selection, will identify arsenic patches at the surface.

Mobile Crowd Participation

In urban laboratories in Bangladesh and India, DELTAP integrates MCP with: 
- Dynamic geological models for prediction of arsenic patches in deltaic systems, 
- Blueprints for source-to mouth safe water supply, and, 
- Human-centered design framework for development of tangible DIY materials and processes.

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) LAboratories  

The DELTAP project will explore how SPWS can be designed with DIY practices to promote co-production of solutions, without sacrificing the robustness and safety of the water supply facility. DIY materials are created through individual or collective self-production practices, often by techniques and processes of the designer’s own invention (Rognoli et al., 2015).

Project Output

Project output consists of marketable products (e.g., visualization apps, smart taps) with business models for local SMEs, supported by larger SPWS public-private partnership programmes of water NGOs. Stakeholder co-production has a dominant role in the research methodology, at all levels: End-users produce MCP data through interactive apps; SMEs co-develop apps and DIY products; NGOs build SPWS for pilot research; joint science/NGO policy briefings. This co-production results in strong embedding of results, optimizing feasibility of highly needed impact for sustainable and inclusive development: creating pathways for safe drinking water for millions.