Growth Model

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, choosing the communities that meet the community prerequisites for appropriate sites, supervising the construction, training the plant operators, and 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 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. To meet our goal 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 that build the water treatment plants. Our pilot model in Honduras relied on a series of AguaClara Engineers who worked alongside and trained both partner organization staff and community members. This North to South dissemination 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.

Our plan is to empower the local partner organizations to take the lead in spreading the technology by hosting workshops and by creating training programs for technicians and engineers from potential partners organizations. This South to South dissemination model suggests that growth will occur most readily regionally. Developing new "infection" sites globally may require use of the North to South dissemination model for strategic regions.