An estimated 850 million people today lack access to potable drinking water, a crisis responsible for half of all hospitalizations for illness in the developing world. The great majority of this population lives in villages or urban slums, without access to piped household water supply. Today, municipal water utilities are the only water distribution systems that systematically and remotely track water quality and quantity in close to real-time. Extending this kind of “on-grid” infrastructure to reach underserved populations is cost prohibitive. No “off-grid” systems exist that track water filtration and dispensing from the raw water source to the service outlet. In addition, it is now widely accepted that collecting payment for public water provision is critical for the continued financial viability and quality of the distribution system.
Several attempts have been made to address these problems. Such water dispensing systems range from simple and inexpensive to sophisticated and expensive. Such water dispensing systems depend on human intervention for machine maintenance, service and maintenance of quality standards. These issues are further compounded in rural environments. The ability to collect payment on use of services is a great barrier to expanding the reach of water utility infrastructure, especially in emerging markets. Service providers, particularly in the case of potable water, lack the ability to assure that the services meet World Health Organization standards for potable water. Remote monitoring systems such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,753,186, while allowing users to track quality of water, do not offer a system capable of preventive maintenance or ability to process payments. To provide a consistent service, the equipment must be sufficiently manageable. Physical proximity to machinery is often the only way to make adjustments. In a distributed system, the costs of getting to equipment to change settings can render the entire proposition financially unviable.
There is, therefore a need for an autonomous water dispensing system that provides for remote, decentralized tracking and control of water filtration, quality and dispensing from source-to-service. Also, there is a further need for this system to able to manage payment collection on service usage and provide preventive maintenance as needed.