Water quality probe co-design for water monitoring in rural communities in Colombia

Access to drinkable water poses a challenge for remote communities with limited instrumentation to test water quality. On-site early detection and warning technologies are a powerful tool for accurate water quality pollutant risk assessment. Furthermore, the problem that exists is that these rural communities do not have the resources nor the know-how to analyze the quality of the water that they are consuming daily. To solve this problem, this paper presents a cost-effective and accessible water quality probe to measure four physico-chemical parameters: pH, dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity, and temperature using co-design community methodology. Also, we have implemented a water monitoring platform, there water data is registered for rural communities in open data access. The water probe is controlled with a mobile app, and the sensor measurements are visualized through a web platform making them easier to understand. First, probe calibration was carried out for different types of water and contrasted with a commercial Hanna probe HI9829 (reference). Then, data were collected on field, and it was validated via ANOVA analysis. The results show that P-values for each parameter of the test are more significant than 0.05 in all but one of the physico-chemical parameters. The parameters are measured within the accepted range for Colombian drinking water standards, with a cost-effective and accessible probe costing one-tenth of a commercial one.