As the water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector continues to face increasing pressures, especially due to the impacts of climate change, governments in will need to increase the sector’s resilience and sustainability. Innovation and technology have a vital role to play in reaching WSS to rural and remote regions and inimproving scarcity and safety, water efficiency, sanitation, utility operations, monitoring and treatment and data and analytics.

Innovative Solutions To Advance Water & Sanitation Accessibility

Drinkwell - which the Water Global Practice connected with the Chittagong Water Supply and Sewerage Authority, leading to the first deployments of four water ATM booths providing safe drinking water access to 5,100 people.

Sanergy - Based in Kenya, Sanergy provides non-sewered sanitation solutions that serve all urban residents and that are five times cheaper than sewers. The company empowers entrepreneurs who operate community latrines that offer a pay-for-use community toilet in non-sewered locations and slums. Sanergy works to convert waste into animal feed which is sold to farmers. In addition, the company also processes this waste into solid organic fertilizer branded as Evergrow. Sanergy now serves more than 120,000 people daily.

Smarter Homes - is a company that produces the WaterOn device, which is a smart metering and automated leakage prevention system. Thus far, the device has been used on apartment buildings in India and has helped save 40,000 households an average of 35 percent of water consumption. Meanwhile, in Bengaluru, its use saves roughly 71 million liters of water every month.

Technologies like the WaterOn system will be especially instrumental in helping governments achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 - ensuring the "availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all."

Sanivation - Sanivation’s innovation is tackling the sanitation problem in a sustainable way. In partnership with local governments, the organization designs, builds, and operates fecal sludge treatment plants. These plants transform waste into biomass fuels which are then sold to cover the operational costs of the plants. In addition to helping cities and towns manage their waste, converting the collected waste into biomass fuels also prevents environmental pollution and saves trees. Sanivation tailors its solutions based on the needs of the people in the region where it works. Over the past several years, the organization has worked with more than a dozen organizations and has transformed thousands of tons of waste into biomass fuels.

Oneka - helps consumers obtain safe drinking water without utilizing land or emitting greenhouse gases. With a focus on Small Island Developing States, Oneka’s wave-powered desalination buoys convert ocean water to drinking water. Each buoy can produce 10m3 of drinking water per day, saving an estimated 34,000kg of CO2 per year.

Water4 - Water4 is a nonprofit organization that partners with local water entrepreneurs to create a sustainable business model that makes water available to people in low-income countries. The organization provides a holistic and market-based approach to solving the water crisis in the communities where it works. Water4 partners with franchisees and provides them with drilling and pumping tools, technology and business management training, and a support network with 24/7 access to the organization’s technology team. By providing a suite of services, franchisees have access to all the resources they need in order to sustainably build and run a water supply enterprise. So far, this approach has proven successful: today Water4 works with 19 partners operating in 13 different countries and has supported close to 7,000 projects that have impacted 1.7 million people since 2009. NUMA Water, one of Water4’s solutions targeted at remote villages of 300 or more people, is able to operate sustainably at a cost that is affordable to even some of the most under-resourced communities.

Wonderkid - offers a mobile management platform so utilities can improve their customer care and billing services. It incorporates data insights to inform infrastructure investment planning, as well as regulatory oversight to monitor the compliance of service delivery standards to citizens. The platform has been used in over twenty utilities in Sub-Saharan Africa and has resulted in 500,000 people gaining access to safer and more reliable WSS services.

Here are more such companies innovators that represent a diverse range of solutions reimagining a water resilient future globally.

• Ecosoftt (Singapore): Fit-for-purpose, low-cost wastewater and reuse solutions for communities not connected to water and sewer networks.
• Electrolytic Technologies (United States): Onsite chlorine generation eliminating costs and risks from transportation of chemicals to water and wastewater treatment plants.
• Fluid Robotics (India): In-pipe robotic mapping and assessment tools to detect leaks in distribution systems and prevent pollution runoff in urban waterways.
• Smart Terra (India): Operational intelligence for water and wastewater utilities to reduce losses, assess network health and improve revenue.
• Vassar Labs (India): Water management and forecasting platform for state government agencies using satellite imagery, in-situ sensors and predictive analytics.
• Veracet (United States): DNA fingerprinting technology and analytics platform to identify the source of contamination in water.