First assignment of group n° 061
Resources used by the team[modifier | modifier le wikicode]
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First description of our project[modifier | modifier le wikicode]
First description of our project's idea
Provide a proposition of title for your project
Please answer to the three expected questions:
1. What Problem do you want to solve ?
Currently, almost 770 million of people have to face a lack of access to safe drinking water and nearly 40% of the worldwide population would reportedly drink a « questionnable » water. By safe drinking water we mean a water coming from a protected source of any animal activity. Improper water consummated by these populations can cause physiological diseases and may sometimes show signs of a social or political character. Moreover, it’s obvious that in the coming years, with the increase in world population and the global warming, the share of the population that can not access this vital ressource is going to expand. The problem is not that much the rarefaction of water but its accessibility in safe conditions, whether in terms in terms of infrastructure, technologies or means.
2. Why does this problem exist?
Solutions do exist, such as desalinization or water treatment plants, but countries that do not have any direct access to the oceans can’t take advantages of these technologies, which are both expensive and polluting. So, water ressources are inevitably distributed on the different continents and populations are also subject to the climatic conditions of their region. For insistance, some African regions are pretty rich, talking about water (particularly around the majors rivers and lakes) while the others have to content themselves with groundwaters very difficult to access. On the contrary, some Asian regions have to deal with too many rainfalls that sometimes cause water stagnation and the development of diseases. The infrastructure that deliver clean water are still very rare in areas such as Africa, South Asia and South America. Thus even if there are sources of safe drinking water, they can only be exploited by a very few people. Finally, the management of water can sometimes be chaotic and in some countries dissociated from any government scheme to ensure sustainable and equitable distribution.
3. What breakthrough are you commited to creating?
We want to find an autonomous and reusable means of filtration of the water to make it drinkable without being dependent of infrastructure such as factories mentioned above.
It would : - Make water drinkable everywhere by an easy and reusable mean (or at least biodegradable).
- Be easy to distribute.
- Not necessitate any installation of specific structures such as pipelines.
- Be a human-sized means that would be easily transportable.
- Not depend of local authorities (to avoid any geopolitical problems dealing with water).
- Be adaptable to any recipient.
Potential experts already identified
John Butler, expert in international water development, work for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
Felix AZONSI, Expert GIRE (Ressources en Eau et Modelisation) à temps partiel chez COWI-IGIP Afrique-MGE