Mapping The Supply Of Piped Water In Kilifi County

Abstract

Piped water supply refers to the distribution of water through pressurized pipe networks. Studies done by the World Health Organization (WHO) have indicated that pressurized pipe networks provide the best protection against water contamination. However, due to limited water resources worldwide and the growing human populations, water service providers are facing challenges in the provision of adequate quantities of piped water for human use. The problem of inadequate supply of piped water to meet basic human needs forces people to resort to open channel water supply networks like rivers, dams and boreholes. This leads to many water-related diseases which impact negatively on human health and development. One of the approaches of ensuring equity and fairness in the distribution of the scarce water resource is to base the supply of water on the available water volumes and existing population figures. Such a water per capita supply model can be mapped by use of GIS to visualise the fairness and adequacy of supply. This research used water supply and population data for each sub county in Kilifi to generate choropleth maps for the water per capita supplied to the inhabitants over a three year period of 2012, 2013 and 2014. The Basic Water Requirements (BWR) index of 18.3 m3 of annual water per capita which has been adopted as a benchmark indicator by the WHO was used to gauge the adequacy of the water supplied. Using graduated colour symbology, these maps gave an indication of the inequality of water supply among the sub counties. The inadequacy of the supply was illustrated using bar chart symbology. The maps generated from the collected data indicate that there is inequality of water per capita supply among the seven sub counties. The water supplied does not meet the basic water requirements of the inhabitants in all the seven sub counties. The maps also indicate that there has not been any significant increase in the per capita water supply over the three year period. From the results, it is recommended that the Coast Water Services Board increases the supply of water to at least meet the basic water requirements of the residents of Kilifi County. At the same time the water service providers need to address the existing inequality of water supply among the sub counties.