When we think about the fact that 70% of the earth is covered by water, it may be easy to assume that water is abundant and that it would never have to be an issue in terms of having a constant supply to drink. In reality, it is a very complex matter for everyone to be able to access and drink safe water. Water is essential to maintain life on earth but as a resource it is not always located and in the state that is ideal for consumption. Often what is accessible is either contaminated, in dispute or not appropriate for its intended use. With regards to water safety, Bangladesh is the country with the largest proportion of people exposed to arsenic contamination around the world, the situation of which has been described by the World Health Organisation (2010) as the “largest mass poisoning of a population in history”. From the various technologies available, it has been established that Piped Water Supply Systems show a lot of promise in providing safe water to Rural and Peri -Urban communities of Bangladesh. Issues with this new system include lack of trust in the system, high costs, infrastructural and technical issues and operation and maintenance issues. These along with a lack of knowledge on water safety and varied literacy rates are some of the factors that contribute to low acceptance of the system. Awareness and educational campaigns have had a positive influence on communities regarding their choice of safe water sources. New and effective methods of building awareness through different channels is needed for long term impact and behaviour change. Approximately 50% of the rural households own and use smart phones with Internet access, and this number is rapidly increasing. This shows scope for monitoring water supply systems and building knowledge with smart phones in order to reach and engage communities. Uncertainties within the system were identified and information topics under the themes of Water quality, Health, Water practices and Water sources was designed to be communicated to the people of Bangladesh through the TAPP smart phone application, in order to build their knowledge and understanding of water safety. The long term goals of this project includes acceptance and engagement of Bangladeshi communities towards Piped Water Supply(PWS) systems and to affect the behaviour of people with regards to their choices on consuming safe drinking water. The use of ICT as the communication channel is relatively low cost and has a broad range of possibility to reach the citizens. The impact can be great if the knowledge penetrates within the families, and thus help in changing people’s decisions around drinking water.

The aim of the research is to aid selection of Household Water Treatment and Storage (HWTS) technologies. By creating an overview of important criteria for choosing between HWTS in a certain context, information on trade-offs is gathered. To do so, an explorative assessment is made of HWTS preferences in various contexts.

In Bangladeshi rural areas, the groundwater may get contaminated with chemical contaminants. Aiming at removing chemical contaminants, piped water supply(PWS) systems were built. However, due to insufficient water quality tests, a lack of households' participation with the monitoring and maintenance of the PWS system, together with a lack of an efficient monitoring model and maintenance system, the PWS systems may fail to provide safe drinking water to the households, and households lose their trust with the water from the PWS system. To provide proper monitoring and maintenance to the PWS system, the DELTAP project and the TAPP-BDP project decided to use water quality field tests and a smartphone application to enable regular water quality tests to monitor the water quality of the PWS system. The TAPP could also engage the local households in the monitoring of their drinking water. The TAPP operator application has been designed based on the analysis of the current strip test and the AKVO technology, which could help to improve the accuracy of the strip test by reading strip test results. The TAPP operator application could help the local PWS system operators to do water quality strip tests and give a reliable indication of the water quality to monitor the PWS system. After researching the households' communication needs and smartphone usage, the TAPP customer application is designed to enable the households to participate in the monitoring and maintenance of the PWS system by requesting water quality tests and receiving water quality test results. After having the water quality test methods and TAPP application, a monitoring model and maintenance system are created to guide the stakeholders to monitor and maintain the PWS system. The design will contribute to monitoring and maintaining the PWS system in Bangladesh, restoring the households' trust in the PWS system, and assisting the PWS system to provide safe drinking water to the Bangladeshi households.