This week and the previous week were tough weeks in which was mainly focused on summarizing what has been already done for the project. All information was converted into a report format for the upcoming deadline. Besides that the first electronics components have arrived which made prototyping possible. Business models have been further developed and will contain more details than before.
Team Madagascar
Team Madagascar was working on a field research in Tolongoina, a rural area in Madagascar
in which currently the water system is being implemented by BushProof. In this area no
network is available, so there was limited communication with the team in the Netherlands.
Therefore an update on this research will follow later.
Team NL
This week a start is made with the software prototyping in the Netherlands. All the ordered parts now have been delivered so the first steps of the prototyping plan could be initiated. The electronic system now has been designed such that the software returns the amount of water the user has used and can still use. This is also shown to the user with a coloured LED as feedback, where the LED turns from green to blue when the user is at half his water credits, and the LED turns from blue to red when the user is out of water credits and cannot get water anymore.
Drinking water prices in Madagascar
Based on the research which has been conducted in Tana local drinking water prices could be established for different situations like a private well or a public standpipes. An estimation of low, medium and high drinking water cost for the local Malagasy standards have been created to get more insight in the Malagasy’s buying power. Interesting fact here is that users in Madagascar pay an equivalent amount of money per m3 drinking water at a public standpipe as at a hometap in Amsterdam. In both situations 1m3 of drinking water costs around €0,45. It should be taken into account that average incomes in Tana and Amsterdam differentiate heavily. Therefore buying drinking water in Tana has a higher impact on the user expenses compared to users Amsterdam.
