Lightning Talk | Rivers of Sewage: exposing the systemic failure of water treatment works in SA

Building on a lightning talk featured at the Code for All Summit in 2022, which demoed the Water Wazi project, the Rivers of Sewage project exposed the systemic national failure of municipal sewage treatment works in South Africa and its devastating effects. This session shares lessons learned from (1) retrieving and verifying data, (2) transforming data for use in Wazimap, and (3) loading data to Wazimap to help tell stories. More holistically, this session explores how data-driven, investigative journalism can lead to real-world impacts.

About the Speakers:
• Carl Jacobs is a Research and Data Lead of OpenUp. He oversees all research-related activities and ensures the data displays correctly on the tools that are built. He is responsible for the Data aspect of Wazimap.

• Sihle Makanya is the Wazimap Project Manager at OpenUp, and he strives to ensure communities have an understanding of what is happening around them to make an informed decision.

🛠️ Resources:
WaterWazi ZA: https://water-wazi-za.openup.org.za/
Dept. of Water & Sanitation’s IRIS dashboard: https://ws.dws.gov.za/IRIS/dashboard_waste.aspx
All Green Drop reports: https://ws.dws.gov.za/IRIS/latestresults.aspx
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