Nainital Water Club

Let’s start with a short survey!

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The Challenge

Naini lake is showing crucial signs of depletion since past couple of years. There are a plethora of reasons ranging from the change in the ecology of the lake to uncontrolled urbanization around the water body. Most importantly is the loss due to the failure of infrastructure (i.e. leakages in the civic and domestic water supply pipes). According to the Bureau of Indian Standards, the city’s water requirement is 8 MLD(million liters per day) while the amount of water being pumped from the lake is 14-16 MLD. This is a massive amount of water-loss that contributes to depletion of Naini lake. The urban local body is not able to track down these locations for repairing leakages easily due to complexity in the network and difficult terrain.

The Solution

We are not asking the citizens of the town to reduce water usage. It is already, on an average, way too less than the specifications of Bureau of Indian Standards. You can help by simply adding to the community generated Public map that marks all the places where any amount of water leakage is visible. To bring this change, all you will need just a mobile phone with Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, or google maps. And send us the photograph displaying the fault and your current location. We track these locations and mark all leakages with technical specifications. The urban local body can identify these locations easily and repair the faults. We aim to save more than 5 million liters of water per day in the first phase of the project.

Join this community driven initiative

For mitigating water loss in Naini Lake

It will take just 2 minutes of your time, sometimes

No need to download any app

Just a whatsapp message will do

Day

Million liters Pumped

Million liters lost

APPROXIMATELY

%

Water reaches nowhere

It is this simple to save million litres of water per day

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Spot leakage in pipes

Share your location through WhatsApp, Facebook, or Maps. Also send any relevant data in the form of images, and videos which might help to find the spot easily.

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Maybe 2 minutes more of your time

If the sent location is not accurate up to 20 meters, we may call you to help us locate the leakage-spot.

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Checkout on the Water Club Map

See if your location is updated on the map & when the repairs were made.

Results of a survey done in December 2017

I have seen water pipes leaking around in Nainital 92% 92%
I have seen water pipes leaking in my neighborhood. 76% 76%
Water leaks in my house often. 14% 14%
I can do something to reduce leakages 2.5% 2.5%

Design for Reward

We have formulated the strategy like a gameplay. It is very similar to addictive games like Pokemon Go and Ingress. Instead of catching pokemons, this time you be catching water leakage points. All around Nainital. And there is no need to have a dedicated app on your phone as well. The public map will clearly demonstrate your contribution and you will be mesmerized to see the change, rather in the physical world. That you have made to save the lake and massive amounts of energy.

Read FAQ for more info

View Water Club Map

Phone Numbers will be shared by Feb 20 2018

Frequently Asked Questions

Who all are the current members of Nainital Water Club?

Everyone. This is an open source project, completely built and running in the public domain. We, as a quorum, ensure effective backend.

What is IDIEQ?

IDIEQ stands for ‘International Design Imagineering and Environmental Quorum‘. We are a young incorporation founded in 2015. Our practice has developed out of a careful analysis of how contemporary life constantly evolves and changes. Not least due to the influence of the multicultural exchange, global economic flows and communication technologies that altogether require new ways of architectural and urban organization. We constantly try to generate innovative solutions and attention to minute details is the core of our practice. As a young start-up, we have taken a lead in the sustainable approach to design, through work that can be experienced across issues related to complex urban centers to detail of a door handle. We stay sensitive to location, environment and importantly the culture, always bringing advances in building technology with techniques drawn traditional values; and we are constantly rebuilding the skills, morale, and knowledge of incorporated design teams, clients and communities to create enlightening environments.

How does idieq helps in mitigating infrastructure loss of water?

We connect citizen(the user of water) directly to the urban local body(the provider of infrastructure) through a Public Map that stores all the data regarding loss of water due to faults in infrastructure. The public map can be accessed by anyone so that a constant, decentralized check can be maintained over the ULB by citizens themselves. It is a movement, we strive to build together.

Who is responsible for water supply in the cities?

It is city government which is responsible for operation and maintenance costs related to the water infrastructure. Only certain portions of design/planning and implementation are overlooked by the national and state governments. The operations and maintenance of the water systems and infrastructure is the responsibility of Urban Local Body only.

	Funding	Design and Planning	Planning & Implementation	Operations and Maintenance	Regulation
National Government		CPHEEO, Project Guidelines			Pollution Control Board, CGWB
State Governments		PHED/ State Boards	PHED/ State Boards		State PC Bs
City Governments	Mostly only O & M costs	ULB/ Statutory Body	ULB/ Statutory Body	Mostly ULB

Why cant ULB carry this exercise on their own?

Nainital is a difficult terrain to map.
Also, many urban local bodies do not have enough capacity and funds to carry out such projects because of large quantities of non-revenue water.

What are the sources of water in Nainital other than the lake?

Unfortunately there are no other sources of water in Nainital city. We have created a wetness index map and results demonstrate severe drought except for the lake.

From where does Naini lake gets recharged?

Naini lake gets most of its water from the underground sources. We tracked the flow directions and found out that there is a very little amount of surface water that Nainital lake receives.

flow directions idieq mapping map nainital himalayas uttarakhand architecture

Why should I care about water and its infrastructure?

Across the globe, the biggest of the risks are currently related to water. Nainital currently faces the following challenges.

In terms of resources

We have low per capita water availability
Depletion of Lake is a major concern
Water from distant sources is a challenge, rather impossible with current revenue structure.
Poor quality of depleting ecosystems

In terms of infrastructure, there is heavy deficit because of

Financial and capacity constraints
Poor operations and management
High percentage of non-revenue water
Fairly limited cost recovery

Service Delivery is a challenge as

There is overall lack of access to public service
Poor service standards: Limited quantity, frequency of supply, unreliable timings along with possible contamination of water
There is unequal distribution: poor, smaller cities, regional disparity
There are many overlapping functions/accountability issues

What is the total amount of water in all the lakes of the earth?

Of the total water on the planet, freshwater is just 2.5%. This freshwater comprises of glaciers, ice-caps and groundwater, and surface/other freshwater. Of all the 1.2% of surface water, lakes comprise just 20.9% water. Which is negligible in terms of percentage.

What data do you collect while mapping the infrastructure loss?

The sample below shows the data we are collecting from every leakage point.

we collect following data idieq water infrastructure architecture initial nainital sample

Why do you use Facebook or WhatsApp at users end instead of a dedicated app?

It is simply because you are not required to download and share your phone’s memory with any application for being part of this movement. Majority of people has WhatsAppsapp and Facebook installed on their phones and are comfortable in using it. Also, we did case studies in Indore where we saw that 94% of people did not know about Indore 911 App although they were using smartphones. Most people avoid having dedicated applications on their smartphones not just because its related to a civic service but hardware constraints also.

Which regions are vulnerable to water-loss?

The water through the pumping stations is pumped approximately up to 1500ft of altitude through feeder pipes and these are less vulnerable the leakages. Most of the water loss happens in the distribution network which comes down from storage atop. These pipelines are thinner in diameter and could be hidden by the shrubs or soil, hence any kind of unusual water flow(which may not be connected visually to infrastructure) should also be reported.
Also, the informal settlements are massively vulnerable to water-loss although water requirement in many of such areas is fulfilled by broken pipelines. Solutions like simply putting a tap in these areas will reduce loss massively.