The residents of Mwendo, a community of 3,000 people in remote Rwanda, needed to carry 20-liter jerry cans to obtain water. The Engineers Without Borders plan was to rehabilitate a large water tank and install a pipe directly to the local school. However, they faced challenges due to their use of a gravity-fed system. The elevation change and the difficulty of the terrain made traditional survey techniques challenging.
Approach
To gain the accuracy Brodbeck, a professor from Auburn University, needed for the project, he used the Trimble® R2 and CenterPoint® RTX. CenterPoint RTX allowed the team to collect extremely accurate elevation data that was used to determine flow distribution under a variety of conditions. The team used CenterPoint RTX to verify elevations at five high points along the pipeline, ensuring elevations were lower than the source point.
“Trimble CenterPoint RTX provided reliable data when we needed to know the data was accurate and everything worked correctly. Without this data, our design would have been incredibly difficult.” — Christian Brodbeck
Results
The R2 and CenterPoint RTX are now used extensively by the Engineers Without Borders team for designing and implementing water distribution systems in underdeveloped countries.
