In collaboration with the Global WasH Faculty Cluster, the Global WasH Student Chapter got the opportunity to host Dr. Evan Thomas, Director of the Mortenson Center at UC Boulder for a lunch, on February 14th, 2020. Dr. Thomas is an Associate Professor and holds the Mortenson Endowed Chair in Global Engineering, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Over an Ethiopian lunch, he discussed with a small group of students about his research which focuses on remote sensing and “Internet of Things” technologies for monitoring of water, sanitation, energy resources, as well as water & air quality testing and treatment applied particularly in developing communities.

Dr. Thomas elaborated on his current work of monitoring the water supply of 3 million people in Africa to better manage the groundwater. He explained that the goal of using sensors for monitoring was to evaluate behavior changes, the health impact of interventions & for improving service delivery.

“The local community is the only entity in the value chain that does not need the data from monitoring. For instance, the community knows that their water pump is broken. But everyone else like the service providers, regional and national governments & the funding agencies can use the data for decision making & prioritizing.”

He also took a great interest in the research conducted by students at NC State and listened keenly to the students at the lunch table as they described their work in areas like chemical & microbiological water quality, water resources management, remote sensing for natural resource management, atmospheric sciences, biological engineering, etc.

When a student pointed out the challenges in monitoring water quality in developing countries, especially pertaining to who does the monitoring,  Dr. Thomas said,

“ The status quo you are comparing against is ‘no monitoring’ at all. Our sensors may indicate only a categorical change in quality in these places with no monitoring. So ‘Perfect is enemy of the good’ is a common argument in this sector. ”

“ Lack of funding is not a problem, there is a ton of funding for WaSH infrastructure but there is no funding for operation & maintenance of the infrastructure. ”

Dr. Thomas also touched upon various issues like poverty, politics, corruption – how they cannot be avoided or neglected, and hence the need for community organization & activism. His final message to all students was “ Silicon Valley is not going to fix poverty, Technology can be a part of the solution but does not address the root cause of poverty. If you ignore the government, or if you disengage it does not get better. We need to participate in the long run, not just as a side-hustle or a small project. ”