Nearly 500 new water point records have been added to WPDx by Vergnet Hydro, representing one of the largest sets of data shared by a private company to date. The data comes from the company’s work in Burkina Faso, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This new data from the DRC provides the first data available on WPDx from the country and increases the reach of WPDx to 26 nations.
VERGNET HYDRO is a French private company dedicated providing water access to rural communities in developing countries. To date, the company has provided more than 100,000 hand pumps, mainly in sub-Saharan African countries, reaching as many as 40 to 50 million people. Beyond simply providing water pumps, the company has established a network of brand partners, spare parts dealers and repairmen in each country to ensure after-sales service of its products.
To improve further improve maintenance and ensure sustainability, VERGNET HYDRO has developed national web observatories with its IT partner Aquasys. These observatories provide real time and transparent updates on the status of equipment, and these updates can be provided directly by users in the field.
VERGNET HYDRO’s participation in WPDx has been implemented by AQUASYS, a private French IT company working on water databases. Given the company’s work on standardizing data for exchange, they were able to create a custom web tool for VERGENT HYDRO that automatically prepares the data for seamless integration with WPDx.
Given this capability and the real-time updates from VERGNET HYDRO’s systems, this data will be updated three times per year, providing an unprecedented understanding of water point functionality.