In 2010, when over 2 billion people gained access to improved water sources, the UN announced that their goal of halving the number of people without reliable access to safe drinking water had been met. However, this success was defined in terms of physical access to ‘improved’ sources, irrespective of the quality of the source water or whether the facility was operational after implementation. The success also did not consider the equitability of access to improved water sources. The assumption that potable water provisions can be achieved by simply advancing technological complexity somewhere in the delivery chain, counts many rural communities as having gained access on paper, when in reality many still lack reliable and safe drinking water.

This research will allow for the identification of cross-linked drivers of drinking water infrastructure resilience/failure that dynamically change over time, making it possible to then predict periods when safe drinking water use and drinking water infrastructure is at a high risk for community abandonment and/or failure.  It is our goal to empower local governance and policy action to preserve access to potable water and improve community health. We have divided the research into two Phases.

Phase 1: We will establish a regional database of operational histories for various infrastructural designs and determine success/failure rates and dominant drivers.  Once we have built this database, we can analyze correlations between type of treatment, type of payment scheme, and success/failure of the systems.

Phase 2: Merging together publicly available data from the Government of India and survey data from NGOs, we aim to determine if access to tap water has reliably increased as a result of the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM).

The proposed research builds on work from the Global North highlighting the importance of networks and neighborhoods by comparing their effects and testing for their interaction in a rural village context. By shedding light on the mechanisms by which health information can change health behavior, I hope to inform the design of future behavioral health interventions for LMIC communities. Main deliverables will include two peer-reviewed publications based on each phase of the research and literature reviews and syntheses on the topic.

Short-term (until March 2025)
Contribute to developing a knowledge base on the long-term sustainability of water infrastructure in areas of India impacted by geogenic contamination.

Medium-term (until March 2026)
Build an interdisciplinary team to further explore household level factors impacting safe water selection for all “consumed” water.

Long-term (until March 2027)
Increase understanding and trust around safe water sources to decrease the reliance on contaminated water sources.
Foster discussions on policy that can improve long-term water infrastructure sustainability and resilience in rural and peri-urban areas of India.

Relevance to the peace-sustainability nexus

Water is life.  Access to reliable, sustainable, potable water is critical to community and peace building.  Water, when mismanaged, can be used as a weapon or tool to repress and impoverish communities.  This research aims to expand access and ensure sustainable, resilient water provisions, moving the engineer-centered dialog of sustainability beyond simply building infrastructure.