Technology and consulting group IBM South Africa recently launched a crowd-sourcing project to capture, share and analyse information on the water distribution system in the country.

This project comprises a mobile phone application and SMS facility that allow South African citizens to report water leaks, faulty pipes and the general conditions of water canals to a database linked to the relevant municipalities.

Every update provides data points for an aggregated report on WaterWatchers, a nonprofit initiative that represents a new kind of data aggregation, analytics and visualisation for water planners in South Africa to create a single integrated view of the issues challenging the country’s water distribution system.

The project comes out of an IBM initiative, Corporate Service Corps, which sent a group of internationally assembled senior executives to engage with representatives of the City of Tshwane in October last year on their non- revenue water issues.

It was a philanthropic exercise through IBM’s executive-services initiative that is part of IBM’s corporate social investment programmes. The team presented a report of its findings and recommendations for Tshwane to address these issues.

IBM South Africa Smarter Planet executive Ahmed Simjee says the company began exploring the idea of using crowd sourcing to deal with water-related issues, after the successful implementation of the CreekWatch mobile application in the US city of San Jose. The application is being used in more than 25 countries.

CreekWatch was launched in 2010 and IBM adapted the concept for WaterWatchers to include additional capabilities, such as the SMS facility and the ability to share photos on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

After a citizen has taken a photo and answered three questions about the particular water canal or pipe, the data is uploaded in real time to a central database. After 30 days, the data is analysed and aggregated into a meaningful ‘leak hot spot’ map for South Africa.

“This project is about analysing use, pre- dicting demand and managing the future of our country’s water,” says Simjee.

Crowd sourcing encourages South African citizens to engage with the environment and help create a big picture map of water leaks and nonrevenue water issues by enabling individuals to gather and submit data.

Pretoria will lead the roll-out of this programme on a national scale.

Tshwane executive Mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa encourages other cities to join the initiative and help manage water resources.

The free app is available for download at www.ibmwaterwatchers.co.za for Android OS and other systems will be available soon. Reporting can also be done through the SMS facility on 45946 (R1.50 per SMS, conditions apply) and on the website, both of which provide multiple ways of collecting and reporting issues pertaining to local waterways and pipes to a centralised portal.

A ‘WaterWatchers’ report will then be made available to local municipalities, water control boards and other water-system stakeholders once the data has been appropriately filtered. It will enable local municipalities to visualise and prioritise improvements and repairs to water infrastructure.

The platform has the potential for incorporating similar applications, which can be used to monitor and report on other issues, such as potholes and late buses, wildlife, noise pollution and air quality.

Simjee adds that, with technology like this in place, cities can improve their current service-delivery capabilities and lay the foundation for new and expanded services by making their core systems, such as transport, public safety, government services, education and health, “smarter.”

Underspending on water in South Africa resulted in the Department of Water Affairs increasing its spending by 20% to R9-billion in the 2011/12 financial year. Spending on water-sector management has increased by 28.8% each year over the same period and spending on water infrastructure management has risen by 13.2% each year.

Unfortunately, the pressure of urban population influx continues to place more strain on ageing water infrastructure and, according to the 2011 Census, 93% of South African households had access to safe water in 2010, but only 45% of those had access to water in their homes.