The Operation and Maintenance Network
The O&M Network is the product of a partnership between the National Institute of Public Health of Japan (NIPH), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Water Association (IWA). The Network aims to contribute to the sustainability of water and wastewater services, and through that public health, by improvements to O&M in water and wastewater services in developing countries. It facilitates the exchange of experiences, knowledge and information on O&M of water supply and wastewater systems by bringing together service providers, external support agencies and other stakeholders.
Flood and Drought Management Tools Project
The Flood and Drought Management Tools project is developing a computer software-based decision support system (DSS), which has tools to incorporate information about floods and droughts and likely climatic scenarios into planning across scales. The DSS will help improving the ability of land, water and urban area managers operating in transboundary river basins to recognise and address the implications of the increase frequency, magnitude and unpredictability of flood and drought events.
PEARL – Preparing for Extreme And Rare events in coastal regions
The PEARL Project aims at developing adaptive risk management strategies for coastal communities, with a multidisciplinary approach integrating social, environmental and technical research and innovation. The project, which received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (EU-FP7), will consider all fundamentals in the risk governance cycle, focusing on the enhancement of forecasting, prediction and early warning capabilities and the building of resilience and reduction of risk through learning from experience and the avoidance of past mistakes.
WHO Water Safety Plans: Health through Water
The WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality recommend WSPs as the most effective means of consistently ensuring the safety of a drinking-water supply. WSPs require a risk assessment encompassing all steps in water supply from catchment to consumer, followed by implementation and monitoring of risk management control measures. WSPs should be implemented within a public health context, responding to clear health-based targets and quality-checked through independent surveillance.
IWA – Water Safety Plan Implementation in Africa
IWA is supporting water service providers in a total of 16 African Countries, with support from USEPA and the Opec Fund for International Development (OFID), to develop, implement and monitor WSPs. IWA is developing training programmes, tools and facilitating Water Operator Partnerships (WOPs) between utilities to support implementation. Furthermore, IWA are supporting the implementation of low-cost interventions to improve the safety of water supplies for six water service providers in West Africa, namely: Ghana, Liberia Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Senegal.
REGnet
This network is for representatives of institutions responsible for regulating drinking water production and quality and independent surveillance. The aim of the network is to protect public health as it relates to drinking-water quality through promotion of regulatory excellence and continual improvement of regulatory systems, including the implementation of WSPs within national standards and policies. For further information, contact RegNet@who.int.
Cap-Net – Capacity Development in Sustainable Water Management
Cap-Net is an international network for capacity building in IWRM. It is made up of a partnership of autonomous international, regional and national institutions and networks committed to capacity building in the water sector. They have adopted the Water Safety Plan as an effective approach for achieving safe drinking-water. Together with UN-Habitat, IWA, AFWA and Rand Water they organized a pilot training session on Water Safety Plans in South Africa in 2009.