Collection and representation of GIS data to aid household water treatment and safe storage technology implementation in the northern region of Ghana

Abstract

In 2005, a start-up social business called Pure Home Water (PHW) was begun in Ghana to promote and sell household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) technologies. The original aim of the company was to offer a variety of products, allowing customers to choose the technology which best fit their individual needs. This differed from the typical implementation of HWTS promoters to date, in which an organization often distributes a single technology for the population to use. Instead, Pure Home Water wanted to give users a choice. PHW is also unique because they are attempting to sell their products without any subsidy. The goal is to create a sustainable business that will both bring better quality water to the population and be financially self-supporting. Because the company is new, a need existed to gather data on the demographic, health, and water and sanitation infrastructure within the region. Due to the geographic nature of the project, it was decided that a Geographic Information System (GIS) would be the best tool to store, analyze and represent the data.

(cont.) The system could be used to help plan relevant business strategies, and maps could be created to visually communicate important information among the Pure Home Water team and other interested parties. The final database did achieve the goal of collecting and bringing together important regional information in a form hopefully useful to PHW, future MIT teams and others. However, the use of the database for long-term planning is currently too advanced for the small company.