About
We are transforming communities by developing a universal mechanism for field-testing, designing and evaluating WaSH solutions through an integrated physical-virtual testbed.
CLEARWaSH (Community-Based Learning and Engagement to Achieve Resilient Water, Sanitation, and Health) is a new framework that is consistent with a circular water economy. It incorporates resource recovery with environmental and public health protection and unlocks opportunities for the co-development of technologies to integrate underserved communities into WaSH economies. The CLEARWaSH ERC is transformative; it will advance fundamental scientific and engineering knowledge and create scalable enabling technologies by addressing three key issues:
WaSH Context (Research Thrust 1) is cross-cutting and combines social science practices with engineering and risk assessment to contextualize a community’s environmental exposures, perceived and measured health risks, and willingness and capacity for technology adoption.
Technologies at Scale (Research Thrust 2) will develop technologies across the distributed system spectrum (household to small communities) with a focus on advanced monitoring and sensing technologies, water treatment systems to address multiple contaminants, and fit-for-purpose wastewater resource recovery technologies.
Systems (Research Thrust 3) will apply systems analysis and integration to develop assessment frameworks for solution evaluation, design algorithms for system optimization, and create user-friendly decision support tools for the virtual testbed that will be integrated with physical and mobile testbeds via bidirectional information flows.
CLEARWaSH is poised to facilitate multiple and overlapping scientific, social, and environmental benefits: Using a systems- and community-based participatory approach, we will develop and test context-adapted solutions with our community partners. In addition to research and development of physical components of critical infrastructures, we will incorporate results, outcomes, and products into an innovative virtual testbed that will allow other communities and stakeholders to explore and adapt context-specific solutions to their WaSH challenges. This virtual testbed is a transdisciplinary social science, data science, and engineering tool that will allow community stakeholders from multiple sectors to contribute to and use a platform that integrates social, cultural, environmental, and engineering data and analytics emphasizing sustainability and resilience with smart, connected, next-generation decision support tools.