Wasim Sahu
Saving Lives through Lifeunit
A difference can be made by supplying Lifeunit to people who live with compromised water in areas of natural disasters.
Tag Words: Lifeunit; Water; Dirty Water; Natural Disasters; Waterborne Diseases; Diarrhea
Authors: Wasim
Summary
On sites of natural disasters many people suffer from unsafe and dirty water. Because of the lack of access to freshwater, they have to face waterborne diseases that kill about 6,000 people every day. We want to make a difference by providing inexpensive water filters, Lifeunit, to people in natural disasters so that they can have more access to clean water.
The Issue: Dirty Water
Two out of three parts of our world are covered by water. 97.5% of the total water in the world is saltwater which leaves only 2.5% of freshwater. Among freshwater, 70% is in the form of ice and snow covered in mountainous regions, and 30% is groundwater. Therefore, the total usable freshwater supply for ecosystems and humans is only less than 1% of all freshwater resources. In approximately thirty years, the world’s population is believed to rise to about eight billion people, while the amount of fresh water will still remain constant.
However, the issue is not that there is not enough freshwater. On top of lacking freshwater, another problem is very large unequal amount of access to freshwater. For example, the Congo has more fresh water resources (291, 000 cubic meters per capita) than the United States (9,000 cubic meters per capita). But even with the Congo’s large fresh water source, only 17% of the rural inhabitants have access, compared to the 77% of the city and town dwellers that have access. In general, experts can agree to two main problems regarding the availability of fresh water. The first problem is that there is a dramatic virtual simultaneous extraction from ground aquifers, and the second problem is that there has been an extreme exponential increase in population (especially in third world countries).
Water is a fundamental need for every human as air is critically essential. However, abundant people on our planet do not have this fundamental need satisfied. The most obvious examples can be seen on the continents of Africa and Asia especially
In addition to the fundamental need of water, three out of four diseases in third world nations can be attributed to drinking unclean water. A total of 2.8 billion people from 31 countries experience chronic water problems. Every day, 6,000 people die from ingesting dirty water. This equates to 2,102,400 people per year. In 2006, the study showed that 1.8 million people died from waterborne diseases each year while about 1.1 billion people lack safe drinking water. Diarrheal diseases cause 90% of all deaths of clean water which is the daily requirement for sanitation, bathing and cooking needs for assuring survival. The average person in the world uses only 2.6 gallons of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. One in six people worldwide do not have access to safe freshwater. It is estimated that 1.8 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions by 2025
Community Service Project
Our main goal for the Lifeunit project is to reduce the suffering people from ingesting dirty water throughout their daily lives in areas of natural disasters. The plan of the project is to make it open source for others on using hackaday platform to help for community. Or making it again and aging spreading the knowledge to other hackaday community.
The goal of the LifeUnit to respond to critics by providing cheaper water filters and removing the complete spectrum of microbiological contamination, including parasites like Giardia lamblia. Lifeunit is a rechargeable USB powered electronic...
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tlankford01
MechaTweak
Theodor Hillebrand
Josh
Being a back country hiker, I have used several water filters over the years and hand pumping was always a time consuming chore after miles of trekking. Do you have an idea on how much the electric pump weighs and or if you plan on a more compact system for hiking. I really do like this as a Hackaday project :-)