In the United States more than 2 million people live without household access to clean water. Much of this household water insecurity occurs in small rural and impoverished communities. This is the “Water Access Gap†and the purpose of this project is to develop a better, more convergent, science approach that informs the path towards closing this gap. A convergent team of investigators — from the fields of anthropology, engineering, computer science, hydrology, law, economics and education — will evaluate how stronger connections between social and physical water infrastructure can close the US water access gap. Social infrastructure includes institutional capacity— norms and standards, technical capacity and an effective business model for delivering water that meets public health standards. Physical infrastructure includes technology — water treatment technology, information technology for sharing information about water availability and quality, and a learning platform for training and sustaining a local workforce to operate water treatment technology. This project will evaluate how improving the connection between social and physical infrastructure can transform informal water systems into formalized, financially sound systems that enable better community development.
The central thesis of the proposed work is that to transition from informal water sharing systems to greater household water security, there is a need for intervention (“disruptionâ€) in one or more aspects of infrastructure in a way that catalyzes better integration of the social and physical components of this infrastructure. The investigators further posit that the most appropriate disruption (cause) and the rate of coevolution (effect) are context dependent, varying with starting conditions, or the robustness of the informal water sharing system. The research plan consists of two work packages (WP) that allow the investigators to test these hypotheses with depth and breadth. In WP1, the state of existing social and physical infrastructure, and its relationship to household water security in colonias (or informal settlements) from Texas to California, will be measured. Here, the goal is not only to test the research hypotheses (disruption, and context dependence) but also to understand regional variation in the relationship between social and physical infrastructure and water security as a function of climate (extremes) and state law. In WP2, interventions will be made in both social and physical infrastructure to four colonias in Arizona in a participatory experimental framework. The research hypotheses will be tested by varying the timing of social and physical infrastructure disruption (when social infrastructure leads by two years, vs. when implemented the same year as physical infrastructure) and by applying these interventions to colonias with different antecedent social capital.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
