SWOT Team Brings Data into Action at University of North Carolina Water and Health Conference

Humanitarian Water Lab lead, Dr. Syed Imran Ali, SWOT Technical Advisor James Brown, and Dahdaleh Scholar Michael De Santi presented at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Water and Health Conference held at UNC Chapel Hill from October 23-27. This annual event brings together policymakers, practitioners and researchers to review evidence and develop solutions to expand water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) access and services.

On Tuesday, Dr. Ali presented a poster in partnership with Dr. Camille Heylen and Dr. Daniele Lantagne from Tufts University, and Dr. Gabrielle String from Lehigh University that investigates the effect of chlorination on water acceptability in the Kyaka II refugee settlement entitled “Assessing chlorine taste and odor (T&O) acceptability in drinking water supplies: Lessons from field trials at the Kyaka II refugee settlement in Uganda.” 

On Wednesday, Michael De Santi presented the SWOT at the conference’s Technology Showcase, bringing new awareness to this tool being developed at the Dahdaleh Institute. Michael received travel funding from the Dahdaleh Institute to participate in the conference. This funding helped build new partnerships in the WASH community for the SWOT project and the Dahdaleh Institute as a whole.

On Friday, The SWOT team, led by James Brown, convened a workshop entitled “Data: A Key to Unlocking Quality in WASH Programmes” in partnership with practitioners and researchers from Aquaya; the Drought Resilience Impact Platform, Mortensen Center in Global Engineering & Resilience at University of Colorado Boulder; mWater; Open WASH Data, ETH Zurich; and the Water Point Data Exchange. This session was a massive success in identifying gaps and opportunities to improving WASH services around the world through intelligent use of data-driven solutions.

Stay tuned for an upcoming report on the basis of the workshop findings!

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