Helping WASH practitioners get the HWTS knowledge they need‚ for their specific context

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Over the past two years, with support from Elrha's Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF), CAWST have successfully carried out the second phase of our online Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage (HWTS) Knowledge Base. In this second phase, we’ve created a central place online where emergency response practitioners can access high quality, verified information on HWTS.

The 51 product and technology pages allow users to access CAWST-verified and consolidated technical information, manufacturer-provided documentation on where the product has been implemented and in what context, and relevant independent research. CAWST’s unique Product Progression is based on the extent to which an HWTS product has been independently tested and implemented, adding a further level of expert analysis.

As we highlighted in our previous blog post, it’s important to make sure that WASH practitioners are able to access existing knowledge on HWTS in specific contexts. The Country Focus pages aim to not only inform practitioners which products have been implemented in a given country, but to also provide information on the enabling environment in that country, supporting implementers to know the relevant government institutions, policies and regulations when implementing HWTS. This latter information is critical as practitioners begin to think about the transition from emergency to development and consider if, when, where and how HWTS might continue to meet the needs of specific target populations during this transition.

Recently, we’ve started working with Engineering for Change fellows and partners based in countries of interest to continue to collect and synthesize this enabling environment information. The fellows and partners’ knowledge of and experience with the local context will help to ensure the accuracy and relevancy of this information.

The newest feature of the HWTS Knowledge Base, which just underwent its soft launch, is the Emergency Context landing page. This landing page is intended to serve as the one-stop-shop for emergency response practitioners who want to access resources that are specifically relevant to HWTS in an emergency context. Here, visitors can see products and technologies that have been implemented in emergencies, independent research and grey literature on HWTS in emergencies, and a map of specific projects that have been implemented in emergencies. Over the coming months, our HWTS experts will be working to tag and add additional emergency-specific content to further populate this landing page. User engagement with respect to submitting experiences and projects, remains a challenge, so we’ll be making a targeted effort to engage emergency response practitioners and add emergency response projects to the project map, as well as other relevant resources.

Author: Laura MacDonald, MSE, PhD, Knowledge and Research Advisor at CAWST