mWASH – Mobile phone applications for the water, sanitation and hygiene sector, 2012.
Misha T. Hutchings, Anurupa Dev, Meena Palaniappan, Veena Srinivasan, Nithya Ramanathan, and John Taylor.
Pacific Institute.
The spread of mobile phones has greatly reduced the time and cost of communication between multiple, often remote areas. Mobile phones are increasingly being used as cost-effective tools for collecting data anddisseminating information. In the past decade, water and sanitation practitioners have begun deploying mobile phones as tools to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services. In studying the deployments of mobile phone for WASH, or mWASH, applications, this paper seeks to identify best practices and help inform future mWASH implementation for current and potential implementers of mobile phone solutions in the WASH sector.
Collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data from remote regions and making the data available in a transparent way can help identify where investments are most urgently needed and can improve the long-term project monitoring. It can also contribute to better water resources planning. Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have the potential to address these information gaps in the WASH sector by transforming the way data is generated, communicated, and shared. Mobile phones are already being used as tools for data collection and dissemination across multiple sectors, such as health, socio-economic development, agriculture, natural resource management, and disaster relief.
