these water-related problems will be referred to collectively as the water crisis. Solving the water crisis will make a large contribution to solving one of humanity’s most pressing problems, by ensuring one of the basic needs for survival is met: adequate access to safe, clean water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Water-related problems are especially prominent in squatter cities: informal settlements which form inside or around major cities in the developing world such as Mumbai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Dhaka, Bangladesh [4]. These cities have dense, overcrowded, and substandard housing, which was built by the inhabitants using whatever materials were available, including garbage [5], see Figure 1. Built with little or no planning, these slums have no infrastructure in place to provide access to clean, safe drinking water [5]. Most of these squatter cities are not recognized as legitimate cities and do not have their own governments. Over one billion of the world’s population lives in these squatter cities; this amount is expected to double by 2030[5]. Because of the enormity of the water crisis, with about 14% of the world’s population living in squatter cities and without clean water, our group has identified this water crisis as one of the most pressing human problems today [6].

2. Preferred State
Our preferred state for humanity is for everyone to have access to the technology or services required to:

• Provide safe drinking water sustainably;
• Maintain proper hygiene;
• Basic sanitation: a safe means for disposing of feces and urine. [7]

Together, these will provide a safe environment in which individuals are healthier, protected from water borne diseases. In particular, our focus to provide these services to all squatter city residents living in these cities today and in the future.

As a first stage milestone, we aim to meet the UN Millennium Development Goal Number 7, ensuring environmental sustainability[8], which includes:

• “Reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water”
• “Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020”

3. Solution Requirements and Criteria
The solution should strive to be:

Comprehensive

• Provide safe water for drinking and other uses.
• Provide cleaning or filtering of water for drinking purposes.
• Provide necessary basic sanitation services.

Capacity Building
• Educate people on why proper water and sanitation are necessary for good health [9].
• Educate and empower locals with the expertise on how they can manage themselves and their water systems [9].
• Ensure that women are involved in creating the solution as they tend to be the primary member of the family unit responsible for health [9].

Scalable
• Feasibly scaled up and adapted to work for any population size, from a small block up to an entire squatter city.
• Be adaptable to other squatter cities with different cultural, physical, geographical, and geological contexts.

Ecological
• Use as few natural resources as possible.
• Use only local materials, used and reusable materials where possible.
• Where applicable, make use of bioengineering or biological technologies.
• Provide a system that is as closed loop as possible.

Anticipatory
• Provide services that will be accommodate the expected growth in the number and scale of squatter cities.
• Be adaptable to new technological innovations and social change.

Participatory
• Squatter inhabitants and NGOs should cooperate in the decision-making and design processes for local solutions.
• Make use of local indigenous knowledge, and any local steward groups to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the situation and ensure that the solution will be sustainable [10].

Sustainable and Low Maintenance
• Be designed to be a long-lasting solution, that can dynamically develop and change, as necessary[11].
• Encourage long-term and continued use.
• Be as low maintenance as possible.

User Friendly
• Be sensitive to the specific individual needs of men, women, children and the elderly.
• Have an easy-to-use interface that can be understood and maintained by the inhabitants.

Low cost
• Require as little capital for the end-user as possible.
• Minimize capital investment and operating costs.

4. Preferred System or Proposed Solution
In order to solve the water crisis in squatter cities, it is necessary to deploy an integrated set of solutions, ranging from technologies to capacity building initiatives, which taken together, deal with each of the problem areas: provision of clean drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services.

The solution to the water crisis should, at minimum, consist of:

• Rain water collection vessels and systems using local materials that can be scavenged, for bathing, washing clothes, utensils etc;
• Community composting toilet facilities using any kind of big vessel or, in the short term, even a hole in the ground and a stick to turn over the compost pile [7];
• Biological filtering systems to clean grey water from bathing, washing, and cleaning, as well as to filter rain water for drinking;
• LifeStraw® [12] – a straw for individuals which filters water as you drink it, which is cheap and effective – to filter rain water for drinking until the above infrastructure can replace them.

If selected, using the $100,000 prize for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, we will find an engineering design firm to design, at minimum, the above components based on our criteria described in section 3 and thereby meet the requirements outlined in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

In addition to the engineering design capability required, the design firm selected would need to have experience in the following areas:

• Working in developing country cities in urban design
• Integrating environmental stewardship with successful completion of projects;
• Working with local communities and building capacity within them;
• Identifying important stakeholders and including them in the design process, so that each of their needs are met in the best possible way;
• Reconciling very different and conflicting design requirements (e.g. using Triz techniques).

5. Trimtab
A trimtab solution is one that has an impact on a large number of people in a comprehensive manner and using minimal resources [13]. Our solution exemplifies the trimtab principle because it deals with all components of the water crisis, using low cost technologies and local resources. Furthermore, it is a solution that can be adapted and applied to all squatter cities, where 1/6 of the world’s population lives.) Our solution also helps to meet other UN Millennium Development Goals.

6. Implementation Strategies
First, we will implement a small-scale pilot project in a particular community of one squatter city. After ensuring success of this project, our solution will slowly be adapted and scaled up to serve the rest of this squatter city, and ultimately, other squatter cities around the world. Based on the results of the pilot study and modifications as required, our design could be rolled out more broadly to all squatter settlements over a 5 to 7 year period. This would be an aggressive but achievable timeline involving great financial and human resources commitment. Our solution may be easily tailored to other high-density communities lacking water resources such as refugee camps and certain developed world slums.

7. Feasibility
Our solution aims to take advantage of funding from foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [14], the Cities Alliance, and the UN Development Program, which has specific water, sanitation, and hygiene grants. It may also be possible to obtain funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) through the University of Toronto to field test the pilot. Part of the mandate of the design firm would be to assist in finding funds to implement the pilot.

We will make use of local volunteer steward groups [15][16], to help implement and maintain solutions at a lower cost. Funding agencies such as CIDA encourage this type of participatory approach and this will make our project more fundable.

8. Design Team
The design team for this Buckminster Fuller Challenge entry consists of four aspiring engineers at the University of Toronto, with a mix of talents ranging from knowledge of sustainability to holistic thinking. Our experience in socio-technical systems design engineering is in framing and understanding global issues in systems design and engineering terms. Because of these capabilities, we are confident that we can design a request for proposal process that will seek out the appropriate professional expertise needed to design and implement the required technologies and infrastructure to meet our design criteria.

9. References
[1] C. J. Vörösmarty et. al., “Chapter 7: Fresh water,” [Online document], 2005, [cited Oct 29, 2007], Available HTTP: http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.276.aspx.pdf.

[2] G. Hart, “Johannesburg summit secretary-general calls for global action on water issues” [Online document], Mar 22, 2002, [cited Oct 29, 2007], Available HTTP: http://www.un.org/jsummit/html/media_info/pressrelease_prep2/global_action_water_2103.pdf.

[3] R. Neuwirth, “The 21st century medieval city” [Online document], 2005, [cited Oct 29, 2007], Available HTTP: http://media.longnow.org/salt-slides/Neuwirth.html.

[4] R. Neuwirth, “The ‘shadow cities’ of the future,” presented at TED, Jul. 2005.

[5] J. Beardsley, “A billion slum dwellers and counting” [Online document], 2007, [cited Oct 29, 2007], Available HTTP: http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/current/27_Beardsley.html.

[6] UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme, “Basic needs and the right to health” [Online document], Mar 22, 2003, [cited Oct 29, 2007], Available HTTP: http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr1/pdf/chap5.pdf.

[7] UNDP Community Water Initiative. (2007). [Online]. Grants—water, sanitation, and hygiene. Available: http://www.undp.org/water/initiatives/initiative.html Oct. 29, 2007 [Date accessed].

[8] United Nations. (2005). [Online]. UN millennium development goals. Available: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ Oct. 29, 2007 [Date accessed].

[9] A. Dzikus, “Rejuvenation of community toilets” [Online document], Dec 7, 2006, [cited Oct 29, 2007], Available HTTP: http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/4180_99251_Policy%20Paper-3.pdf

[10] United Nations Human Settlements Programme, Localising the millennium development goals: A guide for municipalities and local partners. UN-HABITAT, Mar. 2006.

[11] R. Jana, “Learning from informal urban economies,” in BusinessWeek, Sep. 25, 2006. [Online]. Available http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/sep2006/id20060925_363389.htm.