"mWater is the backbone of the WASH sector"
World Water Week 2026
“mWater is the backbone of the WASH sector” was a warming, though striking, thing to hear at this year’s conference. This was in reference to the way it has grown to be the mainstay for so many organizations when it comes to collecting data on WASH, validating and reporting it, and managing their operations with greater efficiency and resilience. Backbones also imply trust and accountability, and these are both something conferences like World Water Week help strengthen thanks to the opportunities they provide to connect with partners and users.
What’s in a backbone? Thousands of organizations are now registered and active in mWater; new survey responses are added every three seconds, over 30,000 images are uploaded every weekday, and 2,000 water systems added every week. Seeing the statistics tick along in my control center is one thing, but seeing the WASH work impressive organizations really do, and the challenges they face, presented at Stockholm is what, for me, grounds the scale in a different way.
Some focused reflections with this all in mind:
“We trust mWater because others trust mWater”. Maintaining active connections with key players in the sector is more important than ever, and I’m always grateful to be able to have so many good conversations here in Stockholm, and be responsive to their hopes and concerns. mWater’s high level of trust is grounded in such relationships, as well as the close connections and attentive support we love to give to our users. I’m glad that we are carefully scaling up that support capacity to match increased platform use. Key to this is the new mWater-subsidiary, Stellar, which I’m also leading.
Software velocity is racing ahead, for us and others, but the basics matter even more. In other words, as the difficulty of creating any individual software feature is falling with AI-boosted coding, trust and reliability climb further in terms of relative importance. The essential, but somewhat less glamorous, parts of software engineering such as data security, user management, scalable and safe database design, battle-tested data models, audit trails, and data recovery. These are things mWater has paid patient attention to for years, and will continue to. mWater will continue to keep data safe.
Networks shape us inside and out. We have had an amazing year of new feature releases this year, a year of acceleration, thanks to productive contracts with partners, and to more effective software development combining expertise and nimbleness. We work to make sure these features work in harmony with each other, so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: mapping assets leads to automatic, useful dashboards; surveys connect to sites and assets; workflows remind and guide technicians to perform faster, more efficient repairs; and much more. See our recent review of new features.
With the Integrator, created thanks to funding from UNICEF Madagascar, it is now much easier to connect mWater to other platforms, either to bring data in or send it out. With this easier plumbing between systems, we have seen data flows multiply and accelerate: data from sensors, other organizational platforms, external databases, national systems, and more. The constellations of interconnected features within mWater that support each other, and the ways in which our users build mWater into data flows across systems, together create unique, enduring value and pathways for further professionalizing WASH. See the Integrator.
“Where in mWater can I vibe code?” Different users move at different paces, some are drilling a hundred meters deep, some are partway to the moon, and we want to meet them in intelligent ways without getting lost in the hype. In my earlier reflections on AI in WASH (https://mwater.co/blog/ai-strateghttps://mwater.co/blog/ai-strategy), I reflect on how we must be strategic in deploying mWater’s scale, where possible, as a way to democratize access to technology, AI, and data. Designing pathways for any user to become a superuser with less friction, and for operations and processes to become smarter and more systematic, is one clear way mWater can have real impact there. This week has given more food for thought that I’ll work to distill into further posts on future directions for the world’s WASH backbone.
For all of mWater’s prominence, I believe the impact could be tenfold greater still: through deepening partnerships, solid delivery, reliable funding, and strategic vision that bridges tech and WASH (and the world beyond).
Thank you to everyone I met this year and for the rich conversations ranging from specific challenges with small rural systems to the frictions in updating national monitoring approaches, the poetry of l’écriture féminine to mycelial sensor networks, and Dutch summer techno to orthogonal Australian scifi.
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