Increasing availability of water over space

Improving the availability of water over space is one of the technical measures to increase the resilience of WASH systems, as more points of water in an area means better access for people and livestock. Different options are:

• Methods to improve the siting and construction of physical structures in order to make them less prone to failure and more efficiently used. Such techniques may also apply in general (e.g. key methods to prevent sub-surface tanks from leaking will also apply in areas not prone to drought) – however, they are included insofar that they help to improve reliability of water availability.

• Suitable storage methods that take into account the high rain intensity that falls for short time periods in many areas – such storage needs to be able to not only store enough volume of water to last through many months of dry season and/or drought, but also needs to be able to conserve evaporation given the high PET rates in many areas.