Drinking water quality
to develop and enhance access to sustainable, safe sources in both small and large water infrastructure.
Impacts of climate change, such as floods and droughts, manifest themselves in poor access to enough drinking water but also impact the quality of drinking water by spreading infectious diseases.
Drinking unsafe water causes illnesses, such as diarrhoea, which contaminates groundwaters and surface waters used for drinking-water, irrigation, recreation, hygiene and cooking.
The resilience of our water systems will be crucial in coping with the global water crisis. It'll also be a critical determinant of how health systems can serve the populations that they are intended for.
This is not just a problem for low-income countries, as all countries face challenges with sustainable water provision. Small and large infrastructure development ensures the sustainable provision of safe drinking water.
This includes advancement in monitoring and management, innovation, supply chain optimisation and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the accessibility of clean water systems.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), up to 1.4 million deaths annually could be prevented with better access to water, sanitation and hygiene services.
WHO emphasise the potential for progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goal, SDG6 through targeted investment, better governance, data optimisation and compliance with drinking-water and sanitation standards. These measures improve health, stop disease transmission and improve resilience against climate change and other pressures.
Read the University of Surrey's Sustainability Development Goal Report for 2021/2022 to see the impact Dr Kathy Pond's work is making for SDG6: Clean Water and Sanitation.
Small drinking-water supplies, used by 40% of the global population, are especially vulnerable due to the lack of investment, management, and remote nature of people using these supplies. Small supplies are the focus of Kathy's work to target the sustainable provision of safely managed drinking water from source to tap.
Kathy's research aims to improve and implement low-cost tools to enhance provision of sustainable water supplies, in terms of quantity and quality, by looking at the water sources. Her work with colleagues also involves making tools to identify hazards to drinking-water quality in the catchment area for the source.
One in four handpumps in sub-Saharan Africa are non-functional at any time, leaving communities having to walk considerable distances to find a suitable replacement supply. Inevitably, this takes women and children particularly away from other activities such as education and caring for family. Through laboratory and field studies, Kathy's work investigates how climate change may exacerbate the breakdown of this technology and look for solutions.
Dr Kathy Pond is Co-Lead of the Water Innovation and Sustainability programme, leading the Drinking Water Quality research.
Kathy's group are a WHO Collaborating Centre within the School of Sustainability, Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Surrey. This contributed to the revision of the Guidelines for small drinking-water quality: small water supplies and sanitary risk assessments for use by small drinking-water supply owners and managers.
