Water-Quality Map
Tap any place — see current water-quality conditions and the open-source treatment techniques that fit. Country shading from / (drinking-water access) and (freshwater stress); disaster alerts from ; water-quality readings from USGS gauges. All refreshed once a day.
Interactive map unavailable — pick a country
Opens on a top-5 worst region for the active indicator. Use search or the worst-list to explore your own region.
Act now — what you can do
Curated, link-out-only. Pick a country on the map to see actions tailored to its situation.
Worst by indicator
Top 12 countries on the active indicator. Click a row to fly there and see techniques.
Live water disasters
Floods, droughts, and tropical cyclones from (UN OCHA + ). Click any event for recommended actions. Recent (<7 d) events are highlighted on the map.
Loading current disasters…
My action log 0
A private record of the things you’ve marked done or set a reminder for. Saved only in your browser; nothing is uploaded. The point is to turn one-shot intent into a habit.
Your pins 0
Saved only in your browser (localStorage). Nothing is uploaded. Export to back up or share by file.
Browse the open technique catalog (24 techniques)
Each technique is community- or household-scale and pairs with at least one freely accessible reference (CAWST, Eawag/Sandec, SSWM, , , IRC…). Click any card for details.
How this portal works
- Country shading is served from our daily refresh (the same payload for every visitor):
- Drinking-water access gap — via Our World in Data.
- Freshwater-withdrawal stress — AQUASTAT (UN 6.4.2) via Our World in Data.
- Click anywhere to see techniques. The recommender derives need signals (drinking-water gap, water stress, disaster proximity, climate band) and ranks the catalog by use-case match plus simplicity.
- Live disasters come from (UN OCHA + ). The popup ranks the techniques most likely to be useful for that disaster type. Use the time-window chips to focus on the last 7 / 30 / 90 days; recent (<7 d) markers render larger.
- US gauges (USGS) show every USGS NWIS site with a recent reading of temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, specific conductance, or turbidity as of the daily refresh. Each gauge carries a status badge: a green ok = all readings in expected range, a yellow watch = one out-of-range, a red concern = two or more. Click any gauge for the latest values and a deep link to the official USGS site page.
- Freshness. The three feeds above (indicators, disasters, USGS) are pulled on a daily schedule, normalized into a single tiny payload, and served to every visitor. The browser only ever talks to our own server for them. Result: same-day freshness, one upstream call per day regardless of audience size, deliberately negligible running costs, and a polite footprint on the public agencies whose data we re-share.
- Drinking-water taps (OSM) is an opt-in layer. Toggle it on (or click Reload taps in view) to query OpenStreetMap for public taps in the current map view. Cached in your browser for 24 h.
- Your pins live in your browser’s local storage. Use Export JSON to back them up or share with someone you trust.
- No accounts. No tracking. No upload. Outbound calls from the browser: our own server (live data), OpenFreeMap (basemap), and OpenStreetMap (only if you opt in to taps).
Sources: country borders — Natural Earth (public domain); basemap — OpenFreeMap & OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); drinking-water access — (CC BY 4.0) via Our World in Data; water stress — AQUASTAT / UN-Water SDG 6.4.2 (CC BY 4.0) via Our World in Data; disaster alerts — (UN OCHA + ), refreshed daily; US water-quality gauges — USGS NWIS Instantaneous Values (public domain), refreshed daily; public drinking-water taps — OpenStreetMap contributors via the Overpass API (ODbL); rendering — MapLibre GL JS (BSD-3); technique catalog assembled from open-access references including CAWST, Eawag/Sandec, SSWM, , US , IRC .
National figures hide local realities. Switching to local crisis data requires sub-national surveys; where a country publishes one, drill down there — the EU’s WISE (Water Information System for Europe), the UK’s Drinking Water Inspectorate, India’s Jal Jeevan Mission, the US’s Drinking Water Dashboard, and equivalent national portals. For places without one, ask local authorities. See methodology.