Water unavailability is a problem that families face in almost all of the cities in South Asia and in at least a third of the rest of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Millions of households have a piped water supply. However, water is only available through these pipes for a few hours at a time. Households faced with irregular water supply may lose hours each day waiting for water. They become stressed and regularly use unsafe sources of water instead. Part of the problem is water utilities being unable to reliably track and verify the delivery of water. NextDrop is a program that addresses this problem. As it scales up, NextDrop will use the provided information by consumers to assist water utility engineers in tracking and correcting problems of water delivery to consumers.
