NFC RFID-tracked drinking water helps battle cholera
Deep Springs International provides Haitians with clean drinking water using NFC technology
BACKGROUND
A non-profit organization Deep Springs International (DSI) and Nokia Research Center (NRC) teamed up to ensure the supply of clean drinking water in Haiti. Since the devastating earthquake in January 2010 and the cholera outbreak the following October, it has become more critical than ever to rapidly organize and manage the fresh water supply system.
CHALLENGE
The mountainous terrain and poor transportation and communications networks make it challenging to supply clean drinking water to all Haitians. If the aid workers don’t visit the households regularly, the locals easily revert to drinking unclean water, which promotes the spread of cholera and other diarrhea infections. Could NFC technology help in the battle against cholera and other infective diseases by controlling that the families continuously treat household water with chlorine, while reaching as many households as possible?
SOLUTION
Families in the most rural areas were provided with one water treatment kit including a chlorine solution and written instructions for using it. NRC provided the health workers with approximately 50 Nokia 6212 NFC-enabled phones while UPM RFID supplied UPM BullsEye™ NFC tags with NXP Mifare Ultralight chip. The RFID tags are attached to buckets for storing the treated drinking water and delivered to families. When DSI’s water technicians visit them, they read the tags using NFC cell phones loaded with software guiding them to ask relevant questions about the water being tested. They check whether the families are using the kits properly and deliver additional chlorine solutions, and send the data to DSI’s headquarters via SMS.
SUCCESS
Using RFID in the process, the report information is current, more reliable and properly detailed. The system also verifies that control visits have actually been done. Taking time-consuming paperwork out of the process means the technicians can visit many more households. According to DSI, using the system has reduced the incidence of diarrhea among users by about 50 percent.
In post-catastrophe environments left with a fragile or non-existent infrastructure, NFC technology is a fast and cost-effective way of shoring up or totally taking over maintenance functions. Moreover, it doesn't need significant investment or overly complicated processes; simple control, track and trace functionalities can be created rather easily between an NFC phone and RFID tag, sometimes even without network support.
