Global Health Design: Safe Water Optimization Tools: Ensuring Water Safety & Protecting Public Health in Humanitarian Emergencies

This is the fourth seminar of the six-part seminar series Massive Action: Global Health Design, led by visionary designer Bruce Mau.

In this seminar, we will learn about the Safe Water Optimization Tools, led by research fellow Syed Imran Ali, and community fellow Bruce Mau will offer insights and lead a workshop on the project’s design opportunities.

About the Safe Water Optimization Tools

Waterborne illnesses like cholera are among the leading threats facing displaced people during humanitarian emergencies. Many water engineering practices used in humanitarian response however are not based on field evidence and fail to reliably protect public health. The Safe Water Optimization Tool (SWOT) is an innovative web-based water quality modelling platform that uses machine learning and numerical modelling to unlock life-saving information from routine monitoring data. The SWOT currently generates evidence-based, context-specific water chlorination targets that help keep water safe all the way to the point-of-consumption, and our vision is to build a full toolkit that helps unlock insights from the data already collected in the humanitarian sector.

More about the Safe Water Optimization Tool

This seminar series is co-organized by the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and York University’s Department of Design.