Water Transport Infrastructure
Group Members
| Name | Student Id |
|---|---|
| Han Wei Chia | 1002684 |
| Hans Chia | 0979848 |
| Joost Roordink | 1005406 |
| Dennis Rizviç | 1020540 |
| Minjin Song | 1194206 |
| Thomas Gian | 0995114 |
Subject
According to research, one in six people have no access to drinkable water. Even if they have a water source, it takes them hours of travelling long distances to reach it. This causes a harsh environment for humans to survive in. Current methods of transporting water require expensive infrastructure investments, which is often not affordable for areas where water access is limited (they often tend to be fairly poor). We want to see if robots replacing these is a viable option.
Objectives
Our objective investigate the viability of using a robot to replace the manual labor that millions of people need to do to have access to water, compared to other possible solutions to this problem.
Users
The main users are charities that help communities or even the communities themselves that have no convenient access to water in areas with a semi-arid or desert climate. We assume these areas can generate the amount of solar power needed to power the water transport robot for most of the day.
Approach
At first we will gather information on the currently existing possible solutions. Then we build a use case through answering questions such as: “What advantages does the robot have over the already existing solutions?”, “How will the logistics of ((bringing to village)) and maintaining the robots work?”. Based on the use case, we can state the technical requirements the robot should have in order to work. Based on the approximate costs of the requirements, we can compare it with other known solutions in terms of pricing. Finally, we will compare all solutions in all perspectives to conclude whether a robot is truly a viable alternative.
Milestones
- Summaries research papers
- USE Aspects
- Locating water research
- Water Transport research
- Water cleansing research
- Existing infrastructure research
- Realize water transport robot
- Incorporate water transport robot in infrastructure.
Deliverables
- Logbook
- Planning
- Final document (including code)
- Presentation
- Research paper of the infrastructure , With Advantages, disadvantages and cost comparisons.
Planning
Literature study
Why does this problem need to be solved?
According to Graham et al[1], over 13 million women and 3 million children that are responsible for water collection in their household need to walk for more than 30 minutes. Note that these numbers are from only 24 countries in sub saharan africa, and the scale of the real problem is even larger than these numbers suggest. The paper also mentions various negative effects this has on these people. One of them is decreased hygiene. In the case of one particular disease(trachoma) has its prevalence almost doubled if water access is further away. Diarrhea also sees significant decreases if water collection time is reduced. Collection of water is also a physically demanding job. The negative effects of this are studied by Geere et al. in [2]. They report that manual carrying of water results in a serious increase in spinal, neck and head pain. Children doing manual labour to fetch water has also been linked with decreased school performance[3]. This is mostly linked to fatigue and lower attendance rates of children that need to carry water compared to those that don’t. Another major concern is the opportunity cost of the time women spend on getting water. Research done by Cairncross and Cuff[4] that compared two villages with different access to water found that time saved by reducing travel times to water sources would be used on either other household tasks or used to spent more time with children. This is also backed by research done by Koolwal and Van de Walle[5], which finds that reduced travel times to water access improve children’s education rather than paid-market labour participation.
Water Access
Water Wells
Water wells have been used for ages in order to have access to groundwater as a source of water consumption. They are inexpensive and require little technology as it’s mainly manual labor in which every person can participate in. However, the costs and difficulty depend on the location of where the well is to be built. In areas where the groundwater level is deep in the ground and also what type of ground it is that provides stability of the surrounding earth will prove to be important factors.
cost of wells
The main advantage of wells is that there very cost effective ones there running, but the initial cost and the time required to make them can add up a lot.
The cost of a well being drilled can vary, depending largely on the depth of the well, the diameter of the hole and the materials needed for the job. Other factors can also affect the cost of the well, such as the quality of the pump, and all the other technology you want to attach to it, man hours needed for the job, transportation of materials and equipment.
Accurate information on drilling prices or costs in sub‐Saharan Africa is not easy to access. Systematic analysis is a challenge because there is poor, fragmented and non‐standardized record keeping of water supply projects and programmes in sub‐Saharan Africa as well as lack of transparency. Table 1 provides examples of estimated and actual borehole costs and prices, ranging from $2,000 to $500,000 ($120 to $1,271 per meter)[6].
Disadvantages
Digging a well can be risky as you will usually be digging deep in the earth, which might collapse depending on the type of ground you work on. This requires technical overhead to avoid construction failures. And once you have a well, they aren’t well known for their hygienic reputation. Wells are easily contaminated and increase the chance of spreading various waterborne diseases such as cholera. Although there are ways of preventing the well of becoming contaminated, like sealing the well head, cleaning it with chlorine solutions and periodically checking it, these wells all require knowledgeable maintenance from the local community that makes use of these wells. They will have to be educated to protect the drinking water. But the cleanup of the well’s water is quite expensive and difficult as well, since they will require chemical, physical and biological treatments. The local community won’t have the knowledge on which treatments to apply and this will require an expert to perform throughout cleansing on every well. Knowing all the difficulties and costs that come along with using a well, It might not always be the best option.
Pipelines
Robot
Will a robot be accepted by the population in rural areas, that may not have any previous experience with robots?
The robot is intended to be used in areas where water access is a serious issue. These areas are often poor and have less access to technology in general. Therefore it might be an issue that the primary user group of these robots do not have any previous experience in encountering robots. One study that dealt with this issue is[7]. In this study a remotely controlled robot was used to carry water in a rural village in India in order to observe the users reactions to this robot. The study reports that the robot was positively received by the population. It also noted that there seems to a strong cultural influence in what the robot was perceived to be, f.e. being seen as female despite it having a male voice. This means that the robot will need some degree of modularity in its appearance and interaction with users to adapt to any local customs that might affect its performance. It should be noted however that this study was carried out in India, so it can be disputed whether the results are applicable to rural areas in africa.
References
- ↑ Graham JP, Hirai M, Kim S-S (2016) An Analysis of Water Collection Labor among Women and Children in 24 Sub-Saharan African Countries. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0155981. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155981
- ↑ Geere, J. A. L., Hunter, P. R., & Jagals, P. (2010). Domestic water carrying and its implications for health: a review and mixed methods pilot study in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Environmental Health, 9(1), 52.
- ↑ Hemson, D. (2007). ‘The toughest of chores’: policy and practice in children collecting water in South Africa. Policy Futures in Education, 5(3), 315-326.
- ↑ Cairncross, S., & Cuff, J. L. (1987). Water use and health in Mueda, Mozambique. Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 81(1), 51-54.
- ↑ Koolwal, G., & Van de Walle, D. (2013). Access to water, women’s work, and child outcomes. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 61(2), 369-405.
- ↑ Danert, K.; Carter, R.C.; Adekile, D.; MacDonald, A. Cost-effective boreholes in sub-Saharan Africa. In Proceedings of the 33rd WEDC International Conference, Accra, Ghana, 7–11 April 2008.
- ↑ Deshmukh, A. , Krishna, S., Akshay, N., Vilvanathan, V., J. V., S. and Bhavani, R. R. (2018) HRI – "In the wild” In Rural India: A Feasibility Study. In: 13th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2018), Chicago, IL, USA, 5-8 March 2018,