A CHANGING WORLD CAN ALSO INCREASE ACCESS TO SAFE DRINKING WATER: THE NOLKUP ANDROID APP FOR BANGLADESH (Invited Presentation)

Over-extraction and pollution of groundwater is an all-too-common feature of a changing world, but increasingly wide access to georeferenced water-quality data via smartphones instead could be a very positive development. The enormous potential smartphones in guiding a large rural population to safer water for drinking and cooking is illustrated here in the context of the well-water arsenic problem in Bangladesh. Chronic exposure from drinking well water containing high levels of arsenic has anticipated the death of tens of thousands of rural Bangladeshis every year for over two decades. Early efforts based on blanket well testing and the installation of deeper wells that are low in arsenic have had some success, but tens of millions remain exposed, often without being aware for lack of information. This is unfortunate because knowing the status one’s own well and that of surrounding wells often provides the most direct path to lowering exposure by either switching to a neighbor’s safer well or installing a somewhat deeper well that is low in arsenic at the same location. Fortunately, the government of Bangladesh has come to realize the importance of well testing for arsenic and was about to embark on a massive new campaign to test millions of wells until the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country. Under the assumption that well testing will eventually take place, and that the data will be collected electronically, our team recently created the NOLKUP app (“tubewell” in Bengali), now available for free downloading from the Google Play Store. The app currently provides access to arsenic test results and depth information for only 50,000 wells that were tested in 2012-13 within Araihazar upazila. The app displays the severity of the problem by counting the number of high-arsenic wells within a 100 m radius of the user's location, along with a correction based on the presence of deep wells installed by the government. The app also shows on the push of a button the status of wells >150 ft deep as a way for local residents to gauge the possibility of installing a somewhat deeper but still affordable (USD150-300) private well that is low in arsenic. The combined information provided by NOLKUP could be used by local residents to convince local government to install a new public deeper well based on objective need rather than political connections. We are about to launch the deployment of this app in Araihazar via a Facebook ad campaign and will present usage figures and other information from 300 target villages gathered via Google Analytics.