Highlights of RWSN's projects, partnerships and knowledge products
Safe Water: monitoring, data and decisions Une eau potable gérée en toute sécurité: surveillance, données, décisions
Project starts: 2019
Project finished: -
Collaborators & Partners: University of North Carolina, RWSN
Summary
New partnership between RWSN and The Water Institute of UNC
Nouveau partenariat entre RWSN et le Water Institute à UNC Chapel Hill
We are excited to announce a new partnership between RWSN and The Water Institute at UNC Chapel Hill. This partnership will leverage the RWSN platform and The Water Institute’s expertise in water quality and management to bring up-to-date evidence and methods to the members of the network. As a new Topic Leader in Mapping and Monitoring,
The Water Institute aims to bring evidence and practice closer by facilitating lively discussion and producing practical guidance on Safely Managed Water. The new partnership will begin in 2019, so look out for The Water Institute’s new weekly Mapping Monday posts in the RWSN Mapping and Monitoring online community in the New Year!
Nous sommes ravis d'annoncer un nouveau partenariat entre RWSN et le Water Institute à UNC Chapel Hill. Ce partenariat s’appuiera sur la plateforme RWSN et sur l’expertise du Water Institute en matière de qualité et de gestion de l’eau pour apporter des données et des méthodes scientifiques de pointe aux membres du réseau. En tant que nouveau responsable du Thème cartographie et de surveillance, The Water Institute a pour objectif de rapprocher la science et les pratique en facilitant une discussion animée et en produisant des conseils pratiques sur une eau gérée de manière sûre. Le nouveau partenariat débutera en 2019, alors ne manquez pas les nouveaux articles hebdomadaires intitulés Mapping Monday du Water Institute dans la communauté en ligne RWSN dédiée à la cartographie et au suivi !
Project Description
Throughout the MDG era, rural water supply was focused on expanding access to improved water sources. As coverage has increased and awareness of service quality issues has grown, the SDG era has brought an increased emphasis on accessibility, reliability, and water quality.
While the WHO Guidelines for Drinking-Water-Quality set standards for more than one hundred contaminants, there is recognition that microbial contamination, along with a relatively small number of priority chemical contaminants, are responsible for a disproportionate fraction of the global burden of disease from unsafe drinking water. Similarly, there is growing recognition of the need to safely manage water at both the source and household levels. This shift has led many rural water supply program implementers to seek methods for conducting targeted and cost-effective water quality monitoring, often in remote and low-resource settings, and acting appropriately on the resulting data.
Suitable guidance for implementers in such settings is often either lacking, conflicting, or unsuitable with respect to the level of detail or accessibility of the guidance provided. There is thus a need for clear, actionable, and easy-to-use evidence-based guidance to assist water supply program implementers of all sizes in understanding challenges to delivering continuous, safely managed water, obtaining robust and credible water quality data on contaminants of concern, and taking appropriate actions based on those data to mitigate health risks to water system users.
This need provides scope for RWSN and UNC’s Water Institute to potentially collaborate on locating, synthesizing, and disseminating clear and high-quality knowledge and best-practices in these areas, in collaboration with other sector experts and stakeholders. In addition, RWSN and The Water Institute could seek to enhance engagement and participation of RWSN
Perspectives
Professor Jamie Bartram (Director, The Water Institute at UNC), “this partnership will leverage the powerful RWSN platform and The Water Institute’s expertise in water quality and management to bring up to date evidence and methods to the members of the network. As a new Topic Leader in Mapping and Monitoring, The Water Institute aims to bring evidence and practice closer by facilitating lively discussion and producing practical guidance on Safely Managed Water.”
Jamie Bartram (Directeur du Water Institute de UNC), «ce partenariat s'appuiera sur la plateforme RWSN et sur l'expertise du Water Institute en matière de qualité et de gestion de l’eau pour apporter des données et des méthodes scientifiques de pointe aux membres du réseau.En tant que nouveau responsable du Thème cartographie et de surveillance, The Water Institute a pour objectif de rapprocher la science et la pratique en facilitant une discussion animée et en produisant des recommandations pratiques sur une eau gérée de manière sûre.»