...
The AguaClara growth model is based on establishing partnerships with organizations that have expertise in the water supply sector and who have a strong structural engineering capacity. These partners take the responsibility for creating the structural engineering design for the AguaClara water treatment plants, for choosing the communities that meet the community prerequisites for appropriate sites, supervising the construction, for training the plant operators, and for working with the communities on issues of governance and infrastructure management.
We anticipate a very high demand for robust, energy efficient, water treatment technologies given the combination of a large unmet demand need for safe drinking water, the increased demand due to population growth and urbanization, and the need to replacing aging infrastructure. The AguaClara team is committed to open source engineering as one tool to help disseminate the technology.
If To meet our goal is to be able to provide the designs for The Cornell AguaClara team will continue development of the of eventually providing the designs for 1000 water treatment plants per year we are developing an automated design tool that will make it possible to deliver customized detailed designs to partner organizations over the internet.
Another significant challenge is the development of a trained workforce in the partner organizations. Our pilot model in Honduras relied on two AguaClara Engineers to work alongside and train both partner organization staff and community members. This model could be expanded by increasing the number of AguaClara Engineers and by sending them to multiple sites. However, exclusive dependence on AguaClara Engineers from Cornell is probably not sustainable nor the best strategy. The AguaClara engineers can provide an excellent understanding of the water treatment technology, but their skill set must be complemented by staff of the local partner organization who have experience constructing and operating AguaClara water treatment plants.
2008
Task | Location | Start | End |
|---|---|---|---|
Select next candidate communities for construction in Honduras | Honduras | 2/2008 | 4/2008 |
Identify the funding mechanism for the next communities | Honduras | 3/2008 | 6/2008 |
Build the water treatment plant at Tamara | Honduras | 1/2008 | 4/2008 |
Train the Tamara plant operators | Honduras | 5/2008 | 7/2008 |
Document Tamara plant performance | Honduras | 5/2008 |
|
Honduras | 6/2008 | 6/2008 | |
Hire Program Coordinator | Cornell | 6/2008 | 6/2008 |
New Regional Partners assess potential community sites | Honduras | 7/2008 | 1/2009 |
Mesoamerican Training Workshop | Honduras | 9/2009 | 9/2009 |
...