UNHCR

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, received a prize for innovative technology use in refugee camps. These camps house hundreds of people, and one of the things they need most is clean water. They have water trucks that deliver water around the camps, but it is expensive to run these trucks all the time, and the water quality and usage was very difficult to monitor. They needed a solution that would be able to work in refugee and emergency camps around the world.

The solution that they came up with borrowed existing technology from the oil industry and put it to use in the camps. A series of sensors were installed in the water delivery trucks to track data on water deliveries and consumption. The devices send their readings to a single gateway, similar to a cellphone tower that can be up to 30km away. This gateway compiles the data it receives from the entire camp into a single data dashboard which allows data on water delivery to be seen in real time. This technology improves the efficiency of the water delivery and ensures that everyone in the camps has access to clean water.