Know where the water points are before the team sets out.
Sanitation Mapping reads one very-high-resolution pass over your district or catchment and returns a dated point inventory of the boreholes, tank stands and latrine blocks the imagery shows.
- Borehole
- Tank stand
- Latrine block
- Unseen
Schematic, not a real district.
A district with a blank middle
You have taken over coverage planning for a district. The district water office gave you its list, and it is old. Partner surveys cover their own project areas and stop at the boundary. In the middle of the map is a large area where nobody can tell you what is there.
So the survey starts. A team loads a form onto the handhelds, drives to a village, asks where the water points are and logs each one as a GPS point, then does the latrines at the school and the clinic, then moves on. The road decides the route. Villages along the tarmac get done and the ones past the river wait for the next dry season, because the rains close the track.
The coverage map you carry into the programme manager's office shows it. There are dense clusters where teams went and white space where they did not, and white space reads as "no water point" even when there is one. Part of the survey goes on finding structures, which is work a satellite can do from above, and the team has less time for what only a person on the ground can do: stand at the pump and see whether it gives water.
Sanitation Mapping hands the team a located list to start from. The walk goes to checking points instead of discovering them, and the white areas get a visit because the map says to go, not because the road happens to lead there.
What comes back
2.1Point inventoryGeoJSON or CSV
Every borehole, tank stand and latrine block the imagery shows, one row per structure, with its type, a coordinate and the date of the image it came from. GeoJSON opens in QGIS or ArcGIS, and the CSV opens in a spreadsheet. One delivery per annual pass.
2.2Coverage gap mapMap layer
Your district boundary with the mapped zones and the unmapped ones marked, down to ward or village. You see which areas have no detected structure and decide where a team goes first.
2.3Field-ready exportCSV for handhelds
The same points laid out for a GPS handheld or an ODK-style form, so an enumerator walks to a point and does not search for one.
2.4Low-visibility flagsFlag list
Zones where cloud or tree cover hid the ground during the pass are listed as unseen. They are never filled in with a guess, and they go straight onto the walking list.
On a pilot, all four cover the district or catchment you pick.
How a pilot runs
Area in
You send the district or catchment boundary, or the part of it you want in the pilot.
Imagery
We take a very-high-resolution satellite or aerial pass over the area at 0.3 m or finer, in the clearest window the season offers.
Detection
Boreholes, tank stands and latrine blocks that show on the image are located and typed. Anything the image cannot show is left out, and the zone is flagged.
Delivery
The point layer, the coverage gap map, the handheld CSV and the flag list arrive together, with the capture date on every point.
Before the walk, alongside the survey
Use the inventory to order the field work. Send teams first to the dense clusters of points to verify them and see what condition they are in. Then send a team to the white areas on the gap map to find out whether anything stands there that the image could not show. Points your team confirms go into the baseline and the donor coverage report the way they do today, from your own survey.
Limits
Limit 1Location, not condition
The inventory says a structure appears at a place. It does not say whether the pump works, whether the water is safe or whether anyone uses the latrine.
Limit 2Resolution floor
At 0.3 m a pixel is 30 cm across. A handpump apron, a tank stand or a latrine block covers several pixels and can be found. A lone standpipe, a hand-dug well with a small cover or a latrine under a canopy can be missed altogether.
Limit 3Cloud and canopy
Dense cloud or tree cover during the capture window hides small structures. Those zones are flagged as unseen and left blank.
Limit 4Once a year
One pass a year, timed to your planning calendar. A borehole drilled after the pass shows up in next year's. This is not a live feed.
Limit 5Not a coverage figure
The layer shows what is visible from above. It is no count of people served, no service level and no census of every structure in the district.
Who it's for
For
- WASH programme officers planning where boreholes and latrines go in a district with old or patchy data.
- Field coordinators and information management staff who load points onto handhelds and report coverage to a donor.
Not for
- Teams that need to know whether a water point works or is safe.
- Real-time or monthly monitoring.
- Measuring population served or reporting a formal service level.
Questions before a pilot
Does this replace ground verification?
No. It narrows where a team walks first. A pump still has to be seen by a person before anyone says it works.
What about cloud and tree cover?
Both can hide small structures during the capture window. Affected zones are flagged, so a blank on the map means unseen and does not mean empty.
How small a structure can you find?
The imagery is 0.3 m or finer. A handpump apron, a tank stand or a latrine block shows up as a location. Smaller things, a single standpipe for one, may not.
How do we check it against our own survey?
Pick a pilot area your team has already walked and keep those GPS points to yourselves. When the layer arrives, lay your points over it and see how many it found and how many extra it shows.
Will it load into our tools?
The points come as GeoJSON or CSV. QGIS and ArcGIS read the first, and the CSV works in a spreadsheet or an ODK-style form. We do not write into your system.
How often does it update?
Once a year. It suits planning and baselines.
Do you give an accuracy percentage?
No. We do not publish one. Check it against your own ground points.
Who owns the data and the imagery?
Ownership and licence terms for the points and the imagery go into the pilot agreement before anything is ordered. If your legal or grants team needs to read them, ask early.
How is a pilot bought and priced?
The quote depends on the size of the area and the imagery source, and we price it for your pilot area. Tell us how your organisation buys services and how your grant is structured, and we will scope the pilot to fit.
Start with one district.
Send the boundary of the area you would put in a pilot and when your next survey round starts. We will say whether an imagery pass can land before it.
Start a pilot