| dc.description.abstract | Water is fundamental for human health and survival. Adequate water
availability and quality are key components to alleviating poverty in
developing nations. Unfortunately, the right to safe water is not recognized for
a large portion of the world's poorest citizens as at least 1.1 billion people
lack access to water and 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation
(WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2000). This has been identified as "a silent
humanitarian crisis that each day takes thousands of lives, robs the poor of
their health, thwarts progress toward gender equality, and hamstrings
economic development, particularly 111 Africa and Asia (United Nations
Millennium Project, 2005)".
Provision of safe water in developing nations is often times hindered by lack
of funds required for installation of conventional treatment utilities coupled
with inadequate technical capabilities required for their operation and
maintenance. Thus new alternative strategies are urgently needed to address
the world's current water crisis especially in third world countries. One such
alternative is the promotion and implementation of Household Water
Treatment and Safe Storage (HWTS) technologies.
Program implementation organization survey and a HWTS technology
selection tool to aid in the implementation of household water treatment and
safe storage systems for local communities in developing nations has been
developed. It focuses more on the social-economic aspects or the
implementation process. The information it provides in comparing
performance is ad hoc and subjective. This thesis has developed the
Household Filtration Treatment (HFT) Evaluation System" solution through
code developed in using the C# (sharp) programrning language.
C# combines the power and efficiency of C++, the simple and clean Object
Oriented design of Java and the language simplification of Visual Basic.
Coupled with its provision for garbage memory collection at runtime. type and
memory access checking, new and exciting features such as reflections.
attributes, marshalling, remoting, threads, streams, data access with ADO. Net
no doubt made it the best programming language for this application.
Thesis objective to develop a program which compares the performance of"
different household water treatment and safe storage technologies was met.
The program compares filters within the same technology and for different
technologies. Such a feature is advantageous in the sense that not only can the
best technology be selected but also general trends are easily established
within specific household filtration technologies. For instance. comparisons
between biosand filter and ceramic filter show that the later is best in faecal
contamination reduction while the former gives the highest rates of filter flow
though; both achieve permissible turbidity considered fit for human drinking
It is hoped that water and sanitation actors including Non governmental
Organizations, different Governmental departments, United Nation Children
Education Fund and others will find HFT Evaluation System" important in
propagating household water treatment and safe storage technologies towards
achievement of environmental sustainability millennium development goal
and in particular "halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world without
sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation". | en |
