when will I get my water next today
tomorrow next week now for those of us
who live in parts of Europe and North
America the answer is as simple as well
when I turn on my tap but for 3 billion
other people around the world the answer
is much more complicated the issue is
intermittent water supply millions of
households have access to water piped
water but the problem is that water only
comes for a few hours at a time now in
Hubli darvon a city of 1.1 million
people in India the local utility
provides water once every 2 to 4 days
and depending on the season and the
neighborhood sometimes it takes up to 10
days to arrive on that day as you can
imagine all the water intensive chores
are saved for that day so you're washing
all your dishes you're washing all your
clothes and you're saving all the water
you can because you don't know when
waters gonna come on next it's a pretty
stressful day on that day of water
delivery and you're probably thinking
that that sounds like a water shortage
problem and in some cases that's true
but more often than not this is actually
an energy scarcity problem let's think
about that for a second water needs to
be pumped from somewhere and pumping
requires energy and to get pressure to
flow through the pipes or to get water
to flow through the pipes you need
pressure and that requires energy too
but to give you a sense of just how much
energy we're talking about 3 percent of
California's total energy consumption
goes to pumping water to Southern
California that's a lot of energy and if
you're talking about a developed country
that's fine but when you're considering
underdeveloped or developing nations
nations that are struggling to provide
even the basic energy demands for its
citizens
well now you can see how the water
problem is intrinsically tied to the
energy issue our vision is to create a
world where every citizen has access to
basic public services we employ mobile
technology to improve governance how do
we do it
we use human sensors simply put people
on their mobile phones we allow citizens
to give feedback in real-time about
exactly what's happening to their water
supply we take that information and give
it to the water utility making sure the
right information gets to the right
person at the right time it's a live
human powered Smart Grid solution to
simplify water issues around the globe
now three years later our social
enterprise has grown from just answering
questions about when the water will turn
on to actually simplifying water
delivery in urban environments all
across India now what we do is we tackle
the problem of managing existing
resources for example let's say you're
an extra user you get a text message
saying in two hours water should arrive
but two hours later you don't have water
you send us a text message saying water
didn't come in my area and we take that
information and give it to the local
utility where the engineer can look into
the matter now let's say there was a
pipe damage in your area which now the
engineer can diagnose instantaneously in
the usual scenario days sometimes weeks
pass before you the citizen get water
and the engineer is completely unaware
that precious water is being wasted now
this is just one example of how we're
using real-time data and increase
transparency to work with governments
and citizens to make water supply and
more efficient and equitable thank you