University of North Carolina
The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina (UNC) was created by the Gillings School of Global Public Health to leverage its unique interdisciplinary experience on water and health by bringing together individuals and institutions from diverse disciplines and sectors to solve the most critical global issues in water and health.
Role in the project
UNC’s role in the Aquatest project is to characterise microbial water quality monitoring practices in low income countries. This work will focus on determining policies, standards, and regulations related to monitoring, as well as the costs associated with implementing monitoring and the impacts or outcomes of monitoring programs. The scope of this project is governmental or other centralised effort on monitoring of microbial drinking water quality. Characterisation of costs and impacts of monitoring will take place in 6 to 12 countries, while characterisation of policies, standards, and regulations will occur in up to 50 countries.
The project will quantify the reasonably achievable cost reductions associated with modifying current monitoring practices in various countries, which could be as simple as changing the type of test being done, or could be as complex as changing the distribution and frequency of sampling at a national level. This work will also look at the impacts of modified practice on the delivery of water quality information.
People involved
Dr James Bartram
Member of the management board
Dr James Bartram has been a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2009 and is the Director of the 'Water Institute at UNC'. He was awarded the IWA (International Water Association) 'Grand Award' in 2004 and holds Honorary Professorships at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, University of Bristol and University of Surrey, UK.
Dr Bartram has over 20 years experience of international policy, research and advisory work in public health and disease prevention, especially in relation to environment and health and water supply and sanitation; and in more than 30 developing and developed countries worldwide. He is author of more than 60 academic papers and more than 40 book chapters, and editor of around 25 books including on aspects of global monitoring, water supply, sanitation and pollution. He spent 10 years as coordinator of Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Health at the World Health organization headquarters where he lead reform of its international monitoring and standard-setting activities.
Jonny Crocker
Research Assistant
Jonny Crocker is a research assistant at the Water Institute at UNC, where he is currently studying for an MS in environmental engineering. Prior to starting at UNC, he worked for a hydrology consulting firm in Seattle, and worked on a schistosomiasis prevention project in rural Ghana.
Jonny received his BS in environmental engineering from Tufts University. At Tufts, he was active in the Engineers Without Borders program, working on a sanitation project in Tibet, and a water supply and filtration project in El Salvador. He also conducted research on novel treatment technologies for groundwater contamination.
Kang Chang
Research Assistant
Kang Chang graduated with Honours from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in 2007. Since then he has performed operations and research for a Chicago urban sustainability nonprofit organisation and completed an internship at a sustainability consulting firm in Washington DC.
A master’s degree candidate at UNC, Kang will be examining water quality monitoring policies of various low-income countries to evaluate the regulatory environment the device will be entering.