As an engineering researcher, Professor Amy Bilton (MIE) develops new technologies — but for her, that’s just the beginning of the process.
“You can design the best widget in the world, but if people don’t want to use it, who cares?” she says.
“In my group, we focus a lot on human-centered design, on understanding what happens to the technologies we create after they are deployed in the field, and on determining whether they are in fact having the desired effect.
“That last piece especially is something that doesn’t always receive the attention it should in the types of communities we work with.”
For her work designing resilient technologies for resource-constrained settings — particularly with respect to drinking water and agricultural irrigation — Bilton has received this year’s McLean Award.
The $125,000 award, jointly funded by the Connaught Fund and the McLean endowment, recognizes early career researchers and supports outstanding basic research in the fields of computer science, mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering sciences, and the theory and methods of statistics.
“It was a surprise and an honour to receive this award,” says Bilton.
“It’s also really validating. It means that people see value in our community-based approach, which combines traditional engineering with insights and methodologies from other fields, such as the social sciences.”
Bilton and her team work primarily in settings where resources such as water, electricity or construction materials are not as accessible as they are in a large city like Toronto.
This may be because the community’s remote location makes transportation costs prohibitively high — as is the case in many Canadian contexts — or because the community simply lacks infrastructure such as roads, power lines or municipal water treatment systems.
For example, Bilton and two of her graduate students recently travelled to some peri-urban communities near the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, for a project in partnership with the NGO Isla Urbana.
There, they tested out technologies designed to improve the collection and purification of rainwater for domestic use.
“When rainwater falls, the so-called ‘first flush’ contains the most contaminants, because it collects everything that has landed on the roof since the last time it rained,” says Bilton.
“Many collection systems use a device called a first flush diverter, which separates this contaminated water so that it doesn’t get used. But studies have indicated that not everyone understands how they work, or how to deploy them correctly.
“The same is true of chlorination systems, which are also widely used. They can really improve water quality, but only if the correct levels are maintained.”
Bilton and her team have designed and deployed small, passive sensors that can gather data on rainfall, tank levels, chlorination levels and other metrics across these systems.
By analyzing this data, and by talking with the people who make use of rainwater collection systems, they can better understand how the technology is being deployed in practice. This in turn can lead to improvements and innovations that boost both water quality and human health.
Bilton says the new funding from the McLean Award will support not only the rainwater collection project, but other future projects in related areas, such as agricultural irrigation.
“It’s very easy to stay motivated to do this work, because when you visit these communities, you can see how people have benefitted from these technologies, and how proud they are of them,” says Bilton.
“These solutions are very much needed now, but designing for resilience will become even more important as climate change forces us to adapt to more extreme situations. Our approach might be a little different from traditional engineering, but its widely applicable, and will only become more so in the future.”
