Skip to main content Skip to secondary navigation

Lotus Water

Main content start

The Lotus Water project provides solutions for the more than 500 million people living in cities of the developing world who have piped water service but receive water that does not meet international standards for safety. Lotus Water envisions a new paradigm for water disinfection in low-income urban areas, one in which water treatment occurs automatically, at the point of collection. The team’s business pilot involves offering landlords different packages of chlorine refill and hand pump maintenance services. This experiment will help identify those services that landlords value most, and the prices they are willing to pay for them. This approach to water treatment employs technologies that deliver high quality water on a reliable basis, with virtually no behavior change required on the part of users. By employing business strategies that target owners of shared water points in low-income urban areas, Lotus Water aims to provide reliable and affordable disinfection services for those communities most at risk of waterborne illness.

Project Leads

Jenna Davis

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, of Environmental Social Sciences and Higgins-Magid Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute
Stephen Luby

Lucy Becker Professor of Medicine, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Professor, by courtesy, of Epidemiology and Population Health

Related News

Water and Climate

Mismanagement, growing demand and climate change impacts, such as droughts and floods, strain limited water supplies around the world.

Program on Water, Health & Development

An automatic chlorine dispenser installed at shared community water points reduces rates of diarrhea in children. The researchers hope the technique can improve uptake by providing good-tasting water and avoiding the need for behavior change.

Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Researchers with the Stanford Woods Institute’s Program on Water, Health & Development are finding affordable, sustainable solutions to the challenge of providing safe drinking water to nearly 1 billion people in city slums.

Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Related Publications