Water Hackathon 2011 was a success! There were over 800 registrants and nearly 100 problems brought to the table for the group to solve. Esri collaborated with great Hackathon minds, including IDModeling, to produce a web, smart phone, and text message based VGI solution to create a Water Access Map of the World.
We’re fast approaching 2012, and there are still a devastating number of people on this earth without access to clean water. The World Bank has made tremendous progress, but we can move even faster and more efficiently with a well organized GIS of the world’s water availability.
The Water Access Map of the World is a volunteered geographic information system of accessible water sources, with attributes like suitability of water for drinking, reliability of supply, and accessibility. The mapping application’s interface and web functionality make it easy for anyone to collect data about accessible water and submit that data to a central GIS database.
The data from the GIS is published as a Web Map Service and Web Feature Service, so it’s available to view, edit, and analyze. The application is written in open source code, so it’s easily extendable. Future plans for the application include a routing engine which will show the path from the current location to the nearest water source based on attributes like distance and ease of access.
For more information about the Water Access Map of the World project see the Random Hacks of Kindness website.
View the Water Access Map Web Feature Service on ArcGIS Online.
