HARIDWAR WATER–DISEASE–AI MISSION

THE PROBLEM

India carries one of the world's heaviest waterborne-disease burdens — and Haridwar concentrates that risk to an extreme degree. As a perennial Ganga pilgrimage city, it absorbs religious congregations at a scale most cities never face, repeatedly overwhelming water sources and sanitation systems built for a fraction of that load. Haridwar today has no ward-level system linking water quality to disease outcomes — no hotspot map, no evidence base, no way for government to target resources.

37.7 M

Indians affected by waterborne disease every year (IWP, 2019)

1.5 M

child deaths linked to diarrheal illness each year (EVS, 2025)

1.4 M

deaths preventable in 2019 with safe WASH access (WHO, 2019)

4.5 Cr

pilgrims through Haridwar in 15 days — Kanwar Yatra 2025

THE PILOT — RHIP

Roorkee is the pilot. Haridwar is the immediate scale-up. RHIP connects environmental surveillance, laboratory evidence, GIS mapping, disease data and resource prioritisation into one framework. Three wards assessed so far show significant heavy-metal and microbial contamination — early proof that the model works, and an urgent signal to scale it.

1. 01WATER QUALITYheavy metals, microbial
2. 02EVIDENCEGIS spatial mapping
3. 03DISEASE DATAhealth-system linkage
4. 04INTELLIGENCEdecision dashboard
5. 05ACTIONintervention & funds

THE GAP & THE ASK

RHIP's field system is moving; the laboratory is the constraint. Limited analytical facility at IIT Roorkee's Department of Biotechnology is the single factor slowing the pilot's progress — and the timeline to scale into Haridwar. This investment strengthens an existing, validated system rather than building a parallel one.

DELIVERABLES

36-MONTH ROADMAP

1. PHASE 0 · ESTABLISH

   M1–M5, Roorkee

2. STAGE 1 · URBAN EVIDENCE

   M6–M13, Haridwar Urban

3. STAGE 2 · SEMI-URBAN SCALE

   M14–M25, Semi-Urban

4. STAGE 3 · TRANSLATE & SCALE

   M28–M36, City-wide

A TEMPLATE FOR NORTH INDIA

1. Executive Summary

This proposal seeks to establish a Preventive Water–Health Intelligence Laboratory using urban Haridwar as the initial demonstration landscape. The facility will integrate drinking-water chemistry, heavy-metal surveillance, environmental microbiology, molecular diagnostics, microbial genomics, GIS, population exposure assessment and predictive modelling.

The central objective is to move beyond periodic water-quality testing toward a continuously learning system that can identify persistent and emerging contamination hotspots, characterize their biological signatures, estimate population exposure and generate evidence for preventive intervention.

The Roorkee Health Intelligence Pilot (RHIP) provided the initial proof of concept. IITRoorkee and Ullas Charitable Trust (UCT) collaborated upon the project which inculcated thorough geographically structured water surveillance. RHIP demonstrated the feasibility of linking water-quality findings with spatial intelligence and identified heavy-metal contamination in sampled water sources. It also highlighted the need for dedicated laboratory capacity to support timely, standardised and longitudinal surveillance. The laboratory and surveillance programme will be implemented through two complementary cost components:

2. Problems to be Addressed

3. Phases of the project: Over 36 months’ time period

Phase 01- Setting up of laboratory Phase 02 - Haridwar (Urban) Phase 03 (Semi-urban) Phase 04 GIS mapping of secondary disease data Preventive Water–Health Intelligence Dashboard

4. Long-Term Vision

The laboratory will function as a permanent institutional platform in Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IITR). Haridwar will provide the initial urban and semi urban as the test bed, but the infrastructure, methods, data architecture and models will be designed for continuous expansion to other urban and peri-urban regions.

Operating cycle: SURVEILLANCE → DATA INTEGRATION → HOTSPOT DETECTION → MOLECULAR INVESTIGATION → EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT → RISK PREDICTION → PREVENTIVE ACTION → VERIFICATION → MODEL UPDATE

5. Laboratory Architecture

6. Phase-I Equipment and Capital Budget

Phase-I estimated capital requirement: ₹4.253 Cr.

7. Structured Sampling Approach:

Contingency & Unforeseen Costs (1%): ₹0.11353 Cr Phase-II, III & IV estimated capital requirement: ₹11.46653 Cr ~ Rs 11.47 Cr

8. Why These Equipment Are Needed

9. Initial Consumables and Recurring Cost Structure

A recurring annual operating budget should be planned separately for field sampling, consumables, instrument AMC/calibration, outsourced sequencing and specialized analyses. The capital purchase alone will not sustain a continuous intelligence platform.

10. Core KPIs

11. Expected Outcomes

13. Three-Year Development Pathway

14. Data and Governance Principles

• All samples will carry standardized identifiers, GPS coordinates, source metadata, date/time and analytical batch information.
• QA/QC, calibration, blanks, duplicates, spikes and reference materials will be incorporated into routine workflows.
• Health information will be handled only in aggregated/de-identified form and subject to appropriate institutional and ethical permissions.
• Genomic detection will be interpreted as environmental surveillance evidence and not automatically as proof of clinical causation.
• Predictive models will be validated across time and/or geography and will report uncertainty and model limitations.
• Raw data, processed datasets, metadata, model versions and intervention records will be retained to support reproducibility.

15. Institutional Value

• Creates a distinctive interdisciplinary research facility at the interface of environmental biotechnology, microbial genomics, GIS, AI and public health.
• Provides a permanent platform for PhD, M.Tech and project training.
• Creates a longitudinal dataset that becomes more valuable with every sampling cycle.
• Supports competitive proposals to national agencies, public-health programmes, environmental agencies and industry.
• Enables collaborations with municipal water authorities, hospitals, diagnostic laboratories and environmental monitoring agencies.
• Provides a scalable framework that can be transferred from Haridwar to other urban, semi urban and rural regions.

16. Final Institutional Outcome

The principal outcome will not be a completed Haridwar water-quality survey. The principal outcome will be the establishment of a continuously operating Water–Health Intelligence Laboratory whose evidence base, analytical capability and predictive models improve every year.

In practical terms, the platform should progressively answer five questions: WHERE is the hazard? WHAT is the hazard? WHO is exposed? WHERE is health risk increasing? WHAT preventive action should be prioritized? This creates a closed-loop system from surveillance to prevention.