Building resilience to climate change in Tanzania

Project summary

This project tackles the issue of drinking water quality in Tanzania through modelling the impact of weather and climate on remote, rural and urban community water supplies.

Project outcomes

This project is aimed at improving the understanding around the interactions of water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) and how it plays a key role in public health. It demonstrates that there is an emerging need for improving the resilience of WaSH infrastructure and management systems in response to climate change.

The UNSW Water Research Centre, led by UNSW Engineering A/Prof. Fiona Johnson, have completed two field projects to sample water quality and collect climate data from 2016-17 in partnership with the Ifakara Health Institute. The UNSW team successfully modelled relationships between water quality and climate variability, and how these relationships impact water quality for households.

These research findings have been given to the Tanzania Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, to develop effective policies for water infrastructure in Tanzania.