Using NFC phones to track water purification in Haiti
Joseph Kaye, David Holstius, Edmund Seto, Brittany Eddy, Michael R. Ritter · 2012
In this paper we describe a system that uses near-field communication (NFC) tags to augment an existing socio-technical system for providing clean water to households throughout Haiti. In the pilot version, we programmed forty NFC phones for use by Haitian water technicians to track chlorine usage in two thousand households, identified by NFC tags on the drinking water buckets in homes. We are in the process of scaling this pilot up to 40,000 households - approximately a quarter of a million people - using 100 or more additional phones. The project involves collaboration between an industrial research lab (Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto), the Public Health School of a university (UC Berkeley), and an existing non-profit organization in Haiti (Deep Springs International (DSI)).