University of Oxford researchers are using low-cost mobile sensors fitted to existing hand pumps to provide water resource data.

Analyzing hand pump vibrations gives clues to groundwater depth. University of OxfordHand pumps represent a low-cost, durable technology to supply drinking water to rural communities in Africa. These pumps can also provide another essential service: generating the data needed to effectively monitor and manage scarce groundwater resources used by around 200 million rural Africans daily.

Data transmitters attached to pump handles monitor handle movement and provide information on hourly pump use. Analysis of the data has enabled estimation of the amount of water extracted from each pump on an hourly basis.

‘Smart' hand pumps trials in 60 villages in Kenya show that measuring the vibrations as the pump handle goes up and down also gives new information about the depth of the groundwater. When the pump is being used to draw water from a deep aquifer, it produces different vibration patterns than when the water level is shallower. The differences in the dynamics of the hand pump were analyzed using machine learning techniques, which isolate subtle patterns in the vibration data to estimate aquifer depth at the time of water extraction..

By deploying such low-cost accelerometer technology throughout Africa, data harvested from every well could be transmitted and stored in the cloud, creating a public dataset that for the first time monitors groundwater reserves across the continent (see video).