Develop an indicator for Solar Water Disinfection

The quest for the development of a low-cost indicator for solar radiation continues. In this report, we would like to comment on some exciting developments we observed in the last few weeks:

- One organization we mentioned several times already, Helioz GmbH of Austria, are in the process of producing a first series of their electronic SODIS indicator. The SODIS Foundation is one of the organizations who will be able to try the indicator under real-life conditions.

- A group of investigators and designers from Italy are working on a novel approach for the SODIS indicator. The idea is to have a material which changes color after being exposed to sunlight, and which can be used several times. This would significantly lower costs of producing such indicators and transporting them to remote areas.

As you can see, several groups and institutions around the world are working on the same objective, independently from our work but often in a collaborative manner. We will stay in contact with these groups and discuss ways on how to implement the different approaches in the field. A key question we need to address is how the indicators are used: either by the users directly (which means we need a lot of indicators, but probably will create more trust and a richer experience for users) or by trainers of end users, who will use there devices as a teaching tool for the surrounding families (which means we need fewer devices, but people will not be able to obtain first-hand experience).

We will keep you informed about these and other developments in the coming weeks.

Best regards from the whole team,

Matthias Saladin

PS: In order to avoid misunderstandings, we would like to make it clear that the activities of the groups mentioned in this report were not financially supported by the SODIS Foundation. The donations received for this project through Global Giving so far have been used for field testing in Bolivia and for coordination activities of the SODIS Foundation.