HIF Emergency Household Water Filter Challenge: Evaluation Matrix and Report

Household water filters can play an essential role in humanitarian emergencies by providing those affected with a reliable supply of safe water. However, humanitarian agencies have only limited evidence on filter effectiveness available to inform their decisions when selecting which water filter to use in different emergencies.

To address this evidence gap, HIF’s Emergency Household Water Filter Challenge will fund the testing of five selected filters in humanitarian emergency settings. To help HIF select, we commissioned CAWST to provide a desk review of available household filters, exploring which might perform well in particular emergency response scenarios.

Using filter performance criteria developed by the HIF, CAWST interviewed a range of experts to reach average ‘importance weightings’ of factors such as efficacy, logistics and cost for filter performance in five hypothetical emergency scenarios. They then reviewed the evidence on these factors for 34 products in total and assessed the filters’ potential appropriateness in the five different emergency scenarios.