The co-production of the Metropolitan Water Observatory (MWO) platform

This working paper examines the development and design of the Observatorio Metropolitano de Agua para Lima-Callao (MWO): a co-produced digital observatory for water and data justice.The metropolitan city of Lima and Callao (hereafter referred to as Lima) faces a water security challenge, which results from the combination of scarce water resources with inefficient and unequal distribution. The lack or limited water access has been a crucial factor shaping inequality patterns in the city. Amongst the challenges for improving water distribution are the difficulties around mapping water needs and the lack of adequate and comprehensive data for all citizens since a significant part of the population is excluded from formal government datasets. Those living in subservice areas, who do not have access to administrative or political structures, and migrants are examples of such exclusion from formal government sources for evidence-based policy and implementation. The purpose of the MWO is to contribute to a fairer distribution of water resources amongst urban residents within Lima. By combining collaborative design approaches with the theory-informed data justice guidelines, we have developed a prototype of the MWO with participants from three districts in Lima. The MWO aims to challenge the hegemonic representation of Lima’s water infrastructure and help communicate the experiences and views of residents currently overlooked. In addition, the MWO teaches us how to design digital platforms according to the principles of data justice in practice

An emerging knowledge system for future water governance: sowing water for Lima

As urban infrastructures are built to last for decades, each infrastructure contains the anticipation for an uncertain future: a city-to-come, often built on capitalist and modernist dreams. In Lima, Peru, the model for water infrastructure development has long been a technocratic one, driven by values such as efficiency and modernization. However, facing a dual challenge of climate change and continuing urban growth, Lima’s water utility agency, SEDAPAL, is increasingly integrating elements of Andean water governance systems – commonly referred to as the sowing and harvesting of water – in its future strategies to maintain urban water security. Our approach builds on knowledge system analysis to examine the different approaches to water governance as distinctive manifestations of understanding the socio-ecological changes in Lima’s hydrosocial territory and how they are negotiated and integrated into Lima’s infrastructure futures. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in Lima and the Rímac watershed, our findings highlight the tension concerning what is incorporated in hybrid knowledge systems and what is sidelined. We conclude that, in the process of futuring, the integrations of knowledge systems should acknowledge plurality in epistemologies and positions and consider the historical contingencies that shape the exchanges between knowledge systems

The datafication of water infrastructure and its implications for (il)legible water consumers

Redevelopments of Lima’s water infrastructure aim to reduce inequalities in water consumption, connections, and coverage by implementing data technologies and claim to make urban water management more efficient. However, little research has been done on how the city’s hydrosocial geography is shaped by the increasing use of data for the supervision and control of its water infrastructure. This article analyzes the datafication of Lima’s water infrastructure as the interplay between different legibility-making practices to understand how the use of multiple, interoperable and real-time data sources, shapes the hydrosocial geography of the city as well as the relationship between Lima’s main provider of water and sewerage services (SEDAPAL) and urban water consumers across three scales: newly urbanized areas, water sectors, and households. We conclude that, in an already unequal urban landscape, the datafication strategically (re)structures the relationship between SEDAPAL, as a state organization managing the water infrastructure, and Lima’s residents