Humanitarian Water Engineering Lab Kicks Off New Projects in Uganda

This June, researchers from the Humanitarian Water Engineering (HWE) Lab at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research travelled to Uganda to launch two new humanitarian health research collaborations in crisis-affected communities in Uganda.

Dr. Syed Imran Ali, James Brown, and Michael De Santi visited the Kyaka II Refugee Settlement in western Uganda to kick off a year-long project that aims to link water quality monitoring and health risk assessment, in partnership with the Nsamizi Training Institute of Social Development. Nsamizi is a Ugandan NGO and the lead WASH implementing partner for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at Kyaka II. The project is funded through a Connected Minds seed grant from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

The core objective of the research is to develop a machine learning–enabled Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (ML-QMRA) model to help optimize water treatment by estimating the risk of waterborne diseases among water users—a long-standing gap in the emergency WASH sector.

A key milestone of the visit was a co-design workshop held on June 5th at Kyaka II, jointly facilitated by Nsamizi and the HWE Lab team. This workshop brought together representatives from UNHCR, Uganda’s Office of the Prime Minister, WASH and health sector partners, and other local stakeholders to collectively develop a shared diagnosis of the settlement’s water-related challenges. Insights from this session directly informed the design of the research monitoring framework.

Following the workshop, the team delivered a weeklong, hands-on training program for Nsamizi staff on a new monitoring framework designed to trace water quality from source to point-of-use across Kyaka II’s complex treatment and distribution system. Participants included water system operators, data collectors, and graduate trainees. The training covered:

• Testing physical and chemical water quality parameters using manual and digital equipment
• Microbiological sampling and analysis for E. coli
• Digital data collection tools and quality control protocols

This integrated training and monitoring effort aims to build local capacity while ensuring high-quality data collection to inform the ML-QMRA model.

This work represents a critical step forward in generating locally grounded, scientifically rigorous tools to support water safety and public health in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. The HWE Lab is especially grateful to Nsamizi, UNHCR, Oxfam, Medical Teams International, and the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda for their partnership and support.

In addition to the work at Kyaka II, Dr. Ali also travelled to northern Uganda to meet with faculty and leadership at Gulu University. The Gulu is in a region that has been deeply affected by major civil conflict in the recent past and hosts a significant number of refugees escaping conflict in neighbouring countries as well. Meetings with academic leaders from the School of Medicine, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, and Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies resulted in the co-development of a research agenda focused on communicable disease control, maternal and child health, nutrition, and WASH in humanitarian emergencies. To formalize the York-Gulu collaboration, Dr. Ali was joined by Gulu University Vice Chancellor, Prof. George Openjuru, at a signing ceremony for a new Memorandum of Understanding between the two institutions. The collaboration is supported by a Global Research Excellence Seed Fund grant from York International and will initially focus on water and health research in refugee settings, with a view to expanding into a broader humanitarian health research consortium in the African Great Lakes region.

Read more in YFile (4 July 2025).

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