System design: Water conservation
Team
Mentor: Harshit Desai
Reuben Cherian and myself
2017- System design course
Brief
The main brief was to make people aware about the in-efficient utilisation of the resources in a society/households. To make kids aware of the right utilisation of water.
Brainstorming
We mapped down all the resources used in a society such as electricity, money, food, water and then inter-connected them. It helped us note down that water is the need of the hour.
Research
USER STUDY
Higher Income Group Lifestyle
Spend alot on parties, weddings, social gatherings and doing social work. Food habits vary. Prefer to have different types of cuisine. Prefer to buy branded clothes. Spend lavishly on luxury and education. Spend on their housing. (prefer to live in a society where all amenities are available)
Middle Income Group Lifestyle
Minimise consumption of food from outside. Minimise travelling because of the amenities around wholesale supply. Reusing of clothes for different purpose. Deciding how much money to spend on each of the categories ,Planning of the futureConsider buying apartments where basic amenities are around. Reusing of books. Private schools. No compromise on education .Reusing of clothes for different purpose
Lower Income Group Lifestyle
Spend on their children’s education. They do multiple jobs to earn a living. All their family members work in order to gain extra money. Makes food at home. They try to spend less by not eating outside. Use local transportation. Mindful of the resources they use.
Studying different systems
We studied different types of systems adopted by different cities suffering from water crisis. Looked into various application where water is purified and stored on a large scale basis. A research on different types of water (Black water & Grey water), different purification systems (sedimentation, boiling, filtering etc.) was conducted. Based on the complete research, a questionnaire was prepared and a survey performed keeping in mind the human behaviour and awareness on water conservation.
Insights
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Uneven distribution of water
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Lack of Government planning and government corruption
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Behavioral patterns of society remain the same while consuming any resource.
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People are unaware of the amount of water they have consumed on a monthly or even on a yearly basis due to the water charge added in their maintenance fee or just a yearly payment to be made as the water bill.
3 Bucket research method
Parallel
Food banks
Compost food scrap
Reusable plastic bottles,
shopping containers.
Delivery of milk to household
Products made out of waste
components
Bio-degradable products
Consumable products
eg- edible spoon
Rainwater harvesting
Garage sale
Competition
Greywater reusing system
Sea water purifying system
Mechanical water timer
(shuts the water after the time set)
Taps with sensors
Taps/showers that spray water
so it saves water (mist)
Trends
Bluetooth / NFC / water proof speakers
Sodexo
Solar system
Fitness tracker
Phone power banks
Rechargeable lighter
Digital money
Training programmes
3D printring
LED
Concept -1
Everybody seems to be aware that India is facing water crisis but as long as they are receiving water limitlessly they don't tend to change their habits. Remote villages and areas are left out because the urban areas need the water completely to themselves. We looked into the various facilities provided like the pre-paid mobile recharges. People tend to limit their usage when they realise that there are just Rs.2 or so, amount left from their recharged amount and try to use it meagerly. (Chargeable amount is calculated according to the total number of seconds one speaks)
The concept is inspired from pre-paid facilities available for different services like electricity, food, television, mobile recharges etc. These services makes the user realise about the money spend on each service on a monthly basis. In the same way we tried to implement a prepaid service for water where the user will realise how much money is being utilized for the resource they use. It makes them indirectly conscious about the efficient usage of the resources.
The water will be provided according to the number of people living in the house and the area of the house. An app will help you track the water consumption. The family has to subscribe to a particular plan. The subscribed amount of water would be provided to the household which will be measured by the digital water meter installed for each household. When the subscribed amount of water is about to reach the limit, notification/warning will be sent to the phone which makes the user aware of the amount of water left to consume.
Final Direction
Thank You!
Neer is a platform created to make people aware about their consumption levels of water. This makes sure that water is used and recorded closely. The app also informs about the water cuts and gives an update on the latest news.
This type of display system is used in society bungalow where the people living in the society can see who all has consumed the most amount of water and who all has saved it.
The consumption of water of each household is displayed outside each house, this allows to have a transparency in terms of usage of water making the neighbours curious about the consumption of different people living in the society/apartment. They would tend to compare their consumptions which would lead to encouraging them to consume with utmost care. If a household saves a particular amount of water, they get incentives like tax benefits, coupons for grocery etc. This not only saves water for the dry season but also makes people aware of the amount of water used by a person.
Take away
While learning about different systems and applications used to solve a few problems on water crisis, I realized that a single solution cannot solve a complex problem like this. A few steps could help improve a some issues. I learnt that a few behavioural traits remain same through out the society and how we could link them and use them in different ways for the better.
Thank you!