Atkins boosts WaterAid Nepal project with digital plans

Engineering consultant Atkins has generated layout plans for more than 170km of new water network in Nepal that promises to improving supply and hygiene for thousands of people.

The work by Atkins was part of charitable support provided by Anglian Water for WaterAid’s Beacon Project, which aims to provide a clean water supply in Lahan – a fast-growing town of some 100,000 people in south-eastern Nepal.

The project was in two stages. First was the development of a 73km of high-level water supply networks in three wards that currently have no pipework. Their 15,000 inhabitants are served by three water towers. Stage two was a review of the water supply layout for urban Lahan to increase customer coverage. That generated plans for 99km of pipework to serve 42,000 people by 2030.

Atkins said it deployed its in-house digital process which draws on global open source or client-specific geographic information system datasets to outline water networks automatically – devising the shortest route from water sources to demand points.

“The final result was that four scenarios with different assumptions were processed through NetCreate, showing its flexibility with standardised data. By using NetCreate we were able to generate more than 170km of high level water network in just three months.”

WaterAid’s Beacon Project was established in 2017 to bring clean water, decent toilets, and good hygiene to everyone living in Lahan by 2030, in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6.