Connecting people to safe drinking water in Liberia with Fulcrum
Having recently used Fulcrum to map over 15,000 potential new customers of the water utility in Liberia’s capital Monrovia, the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program is now using the collected data to help connect more people to safe drinking water, and is working on using Fulcrum to improve the customer database of the Liberia Water and Sewerage Corporation (LWSC).
After ten years of fragile peace that followed a destructive two-decade civil war, Monrovia’s water infrastructure is still struggling to recover. The water service provider LWSC currently supplies only 9,000 connections – less than half the pre-war level of the 1980s and only about 5% of all households in Monrovia.
Fulcrum dashboard showing 15,000+ mapped potential customers in Paynesville
The remaining 95% of city dwellers have no running water and rely on open wells, hand-pumps, public standpipes and tankers. This is not only arduous for those who have to carry water every day (often children), but also a major health risk as recent studies have shown a contamination of the vast majority of tested wells in the city with dangerous E. coli bacteria. Improvements are on the way, however: in 2013 new pumps financed by the World Bank were installed at the main water treatment and pumping station, which have greatly increased the ability of the utility to deliver clean water to the city.
Who to connect?
In neighborhoods without piped water for decades, potential customers may hesitate to pay for connections. The government lacks funds to subsidize installations, and many residents have little trust in public services. Even though existing water sources are dangerous and labor-intensive, people have adapted to them.
The water utility, LWSC, needed a clear picture of which neighborhoods to target for a connection campaign. They had to assess not just demand but also the composition of potential customers. Understanding the mix of family homes, businesses, and institutions helped in planning.
Fulcrum provided an ideal tool for rapid assessment and household mapping. The team used low-cost Android phones, each priced under $100 (Huawei IDEOS 8150). In just two days, 25 mappers completed training. Fulcrum’s intuitive interface eliminated technical barriers, allowing training to focus on survey techniques. Mappers learned what questions to ask, how to ask them, and how to handle difficult situations.
Water mapping efforts support future access
After the training, mappers began work in Paynesville, a district in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. Paynesville sits near the main water transmission pipelines, making future connections relatively easy. In less than a month, the team mapped over 15,000 households, businesses, and institutions. They collected data on potential customers’ interest in piped water, their current water sources, contact details, and building photos.
Fulcrum proved valuable due to its ease of use, reliability, and advanced features. One key function allowed users to update previously recorded data. This made it possible to revisit households marked as “not at home” during an initial visit.
Working in an urban setting reduced battery concerns. Daily recharges at a central office kept phones operational. Devices lasted about 5–6 hours during intensive use, even without an internet connection. The team uploaded data in the evening through a fast Wi-Fi network.
Fulcrum’s automatic generation of KML files for Google Earth and shapefiles for ArcGIS ensured quick data exports. This capability allowed for advanced display and analysis beyond Fulcrum’s built-in dashboard.
Data exported to a Google Earth Satellite View (water-pipeline in blue, interested customers as red dots)
Findings of water mapping project
Based on the data collected, we are currently working with LWSC to design a connections campaign targeted at those customers who expressed a clear interest in a piped-water connection and who are living close to existing transmission and branch-lines (i.e. those cheap to collect).
Going forward, a further role Fulcrum may play is to help ensure that the information on newly connected customers will be improved. So far, LWSC customer databases often lack critical details such as exact customer locations (as street addresses and house numbers barely exist) or contact details. This makes it extremely difficult to ensure e.g. a transparent meter reading and bill delivery. It is planned to use Fulcrum to take details of new customers when these are being connected, including GPS location of meter & meter number.