Research on Tap

In Kenya, forecasters can tell you tomorrow's weather and the outlook for the season ahead. But farmers deciding when to plant have long lacked forecasts for the period in between: what the next one to six weeks will bring. In this conversation, Jeff Albert of The Aquaya Institute talks with Chris Funk, director of the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Phillip Okello Ochieng, a meteorologist with the Kenya Meteorological Department, about closing that gap together. The research agenda came from Kenyan meteorologists themselves. They explain how 45 years of rainfall data from the Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) are blended with readings from 3D-printed weather stations that Kenyan staff build for about $500. They also discuss how county-level forecasts reach people in local languages by text message, and how this year's strong El Niño is testing preparedness compared with the 2023 Tana River floods.

When a household in an underserved community gets a piped water connection, do the neighbors benefit too? It's a common assumption, but new research from Accra, Ghana, suggests the answer is more complicated than most people think.In this episode, you'll hear directly from four people involved in the study: Faustina Boachie, Chief Manager of the Low Income Customer Support Department at Ghana Water Limited; Haleemah Qureshi, Senior Research Manager at Aquaya Institute; Frederick Goddard, Senior Research Data Scientist at Aquaya Institute; and Liz Jordan, former Chief of Party of the USAID Urban WASH Project.Read the full paper in PLOS Water: https://aquaya.org/benefits-of-piped-water-connections-in-accra-ghana/

What does it mean to build “climate resilient” water supply and water resource systems? Answering that question convincingly requires properly understanding the nature of climate hazards and how they might affect water availability. The global climate system is complex: rainfall varies considerably across seasons, across regions, and (especially) across climate cycles (e.g. El Niño / La Niña). Understanding variability and the multiple influences on regional climate is essential to planning for extreme events. Today, teams of scientists from different countries are brought together by UC’s Santa Barbara’s Climate Hazards Center to make reliable drought forecasts for many parts of the world up to 8 months in advance. They do this by using estimated rainfall distributions over the entire planet at high spatial temporal resolution (think one-day or 5-day accumulations at 5 x 5 km grid resolution for the entire planet) going back over four decades and comparing them with robust estimates of sea surface temperatures (which are used to determine the strength climate oscillations like El Niño). In this episode of the REAL-Water podcast, we speak with CHC director Chris Funk about how to generate meaningful climate data products and forecast analysis, and just as importantly, how those resources are already being used to protect livelihoods.

Rural water systems in Africa have room to improve water quality monitoring. However, the most cost-effective approach for microbial water testing remains uncertain. This study, produced by REAL-Water, compared the cost per E. coli test (membrane filtration) of four approaches representing different levels of centralization: (i) one centralized laboratory serving all water systems, (ii) a mobile laboratory serving all systems, (iii) multiple semi-centralized laboratories serving clusters of systems, and (iv) decentralized analysis at each system. Learn more

Delivering safe and reliable drinking water is not just amatter of providing services; it also involves protecting the water resources on which water supply systems rely. Sometimes the most effective - andcost-effective - way to insure reliable supplies is to focus on protection and restoration of watersheds. For example, by protecting the Catskill/Delaware and Croton watersheds, covering nearly 5,200 square kilometers, the New York City water supply system was able to deliver safe water to its millions of residents by minimizing its filtration costs (it now filters only 10% of its water supply). Now, one of the world's largest and most influential conservation organizations, the Nature Conservancy, is promoting watershed protection as a means of securing water supplies all over the world, including in low- and middle-income countries, through its Resilient Watersheds Strategy and Water Funds. In this episode of the REAL-Water podcast, we are joined by the Nature Conservancy's Brooke Atwell to learn about how nature-based solutions are restoring freshwater yields, improving livelihoods, sequestering carbon and protecting ecosystems. More information on TNC's efforts to support nature-based solutions can be found at its Nature for Water Facility Website. We also invite listeners to hear more about the Cape Town, South Africa Water Fund as featured on the Unsung Science podcast with David Pogue.

Rural water economics are different - and incredibly challenging. Can serving rural customers in Africa possibly be a commercially viable proposition? A bold new arrangement in Benin will help answer this question. In this second full episode of the REAL-Water podcast, we speak with Thierry Barbotte and Mikael Dupuis of UDUMA, a subsidiary of France's Odial Solutions and sister company to Vergnet Hydro. UDUMA has been providing rural water supply services under government contracts in Burkina Faso and Mali for several years, and has just been awarded two out of three regional concessions to operate and maintain water supply systems for Benin's rural population - representing a combined service area with on the order 6 million people. A regional rural water system operating contract of this scale is largely unprecedented. We talk with Thierry and Mikael about how this public-private partnership came into being and why they are convinced it will be successful.

In Southeast Asia, rural water service delivery in low- and middle-income countries has accelerated more rapidly than anywhere in the world. What can we learn from the region's recent water sector history that can be applied elsewhere (as well as continuing it on its impressive trajectory)? In this first full episode of the REAL Water podcast, we speak with Hubert Jenny, whose career in the Asian water sector includes positions with the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank, and the Green Climate Fund. We talked to Hubert about the $1 billion loan program for the Vietnamese water sector that he developed and managed - its goals, how it came to fruition, and what we can learn from it, looking through our regular lenses of governance, financing, and innovation.

Ranjiv Khush and Jeff Albert of the Aquaya Institute introduce the podcast of the USAID-funded REAL Water project, a research effort dedicated to solving one of the great development challenges of our time: delivering safe and reliable water supply services to the hundreds of millions of rural citizens who do not yet enjoy it.