Former NASA engineer John Feighery has created an Android app that records the data results of water quality tests and maps them.

Feighery turned his focus from managing water, sanitation and health problems in space to those on Earth after the Columbia Space Shuttle accident in 2003 left seven crew members dead, the Space Shuttle program was suspended and further work on the International Space Station was delayed, Reuters reported.

After he left the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Feighery tested well water in Bangladesh for a job funded by the National Institutes of Health, part of the U.S. Health and Human Services department. He felt the work, which involved using heavy equipment, charting notes and locations by hand and transporting samples in incubators to a distant laboratory could be simpler and less expensive.

That’s how he came up with the idea to use inexpensive testing equipment available online, and mWater – the application which allows people to track water quality tests at any given water source over time, providing instant results which are put in context with other tests.

The app, which is available in the Google Play Store, also allows users to leave notes for other users about the appearance of the water, its scent, and how the water is flowing from the source, building up an archive of information over time.

A photograph of the water source can be uploaded and location details are registered automatically using a GPS reading from the mobile device.

Health workers can use the data or even go with a sick patient and easily test the water where they live.

Giving poor people proper access to safe water and sanitation would save 2.5 million people a year from dying from diarrhoea and other diseases spread by a lack of hygiene, according to the charity WaterAid.

Ref.110.110.110.1837