Engineers Without Borders (Indianapolis Chapter)

August 3, 2020:

geoConvergence develops a geospatial product for the Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA) Indianapolis chapter’s clean water project in Comuna Guangaje, Ecuador. EWB-USA is a non-profit that builds a better world through engineering projects that empower communities to meet their basic human needs and equip leaders to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. When the Indianapolis chapter initially visited the community 3 years ago, they encountered a water storage and delivery system that had reportedly been installed by another NGO, possibly SwissAid, years earlier. The community had no drawings or documentation of its system, and management of it was difficult to explain.

While the addressable problem of water input from springs to storage tanks was easy enough to see, the Indianapolis chapter struggled to understand how the system itself was architected for function. That didn’t stop them from improving the springs-to-tank channels earlier this year, but they had continually sought to help both the chapter and the community to better understand the system.

Over the past year, the chapter worked with a local Indiana-based geospatial company, geoConvergence, to develop and refine a map of the system. geoConvergence was able to access both topo data and current satellite imagery to produce a useful map of the area and its above-ground infrastructure. This enabled the chapter to work with the local water committee to develop a good map of the water delivery infrastructure. This map has become an invaluable tool for the community leadership in managing system operation as well as for the chapter helping them understand, how to manage it better.