Thejo Kote Problem Unreliable unpredictable and intermittent piped

Thejo Kote

Problem Unreliable, unpredictable and intermittent piped water supply Urban areas with intermittent piped water supply (%) 90% 33%

Water Utility Valvemen Valve Areas Individual Households

Household Costs • Lose hours waiting • Use unsafe borewell water • Buy water at higher costs • Keep children out of school • Miss weddings, funerals, voting

Coping costs borne disproportionately by the poor

Utility Costs • Cannot inform consumers about delivery • Corruption among valve-men • Slow to identify and address delays • Conversion to continuous supply prohibitively expensive Image: E. Lakshmi Narayanan, The Hindu

The Next. Drop Solution Leveraging the ubiquity of mobile phones to provide a timely, reliable information system for households Provide water utilities with a cost-effective information system to manage irregular supply of piped water http: //www. flickr. com/photos/travel_aficionado/3185458618/

Next. Drop Pilot: Hubli, India

Baseline study

Pilot: 2010 Engaging communities to participate and send updates • Information crowdsourced from and verified by 180 participants in 7 valve areas • Real-time updates when water starts flowing • Collected 250 data points and sent 50 water timing updates

Comparative Study of SMS and IVR Systems 80 Task Completion Time 100 Verification Responses 87 90 70 80 60 70 Time (seconds) 50 60 40 50 49 40 30 32 30 20 20 10 10 0 SMS mean 5 Voice mean SMS median Notify Voice median Subscribe Unsubscribe 0 0 No response IVR Incomplete 4 2 0 SMS Yes No

The complexity of water Next. Drop improves this delivery is currently recorded information flow by collecting on paper data logs and aggregating in real-time knowledge about water Information is rarely aggregated and recorded timings are often inaccurate timings, and making the data accessible to city residents and utility employees.

Next. Drop Solution: Partnering with the Water Utility Engineer Valveman

Valvemen update system • Valvemen at multiple levels update Next. Drop through the interactive voice response system • Automated information collection and analysis

Engineers see real time updates • Centralized dashboard provides real-time updates to engineers and residents. • Allows engineers to address problems as they come up.

Residents receive SMS updates • Types of information contained in text messages to residents: • “Water will arrive in 3060 minutes” • “Water is flowing now” • “There is a last-minute change to the schedule”

Feedback Loop Provides Real-Time Data • Next. Drop collects crowdsourced updates • Provides the water utility feedback on true water delivery outcomes

Social Impact • Households save time, reduce stress and improve health outcomes • Introduce transparency and accountability into the system • Water utilities will reduce corruption and increase efficiency Over a 5 year period NPV of Social Benefits $15. 9 million Approx. $45 million accounting for PPP 550, 600 days of missed school averted Social Benefit to Cost ratio 7. 4 : 1

Future Opportunities • Electricity • Irrigation Water • Food and Aid Shipments • Pension Payments • Public distribution system

Thank you http: //nextdrop. org

Social Return on Investment