The sanitation crisis is not just a poverty issue; it’s a justice issue. In our lifetime there has been no change in the number of people without access to a safe clean toilet. Still, 2.5 billion people live in cities without proper sanitation. If this continues, we have no chance of meeting Sustainable Development Goal 6.2 for access to sanitation by 2030.

This is a fundamentally unjust situation. We have a real opportunity to change this. Data is transforming our world, and we want to use it to get toilets to people who need them in cities around the world.

Never before have we had so much information available, information that can transform how the sanitation sector delivers its services. We want to enable the sector to harness the power of this data, and use it to get toilets to people who need them most. Our small team has a track record of pioneering cost-effective, geospatial projects that bridge the sanitation data gap. We have trained local enumerators in Kenya, launched a demo platform for global data sharing, and hosted the world’s first data dive for urban sanitation. To date, our work has been published by three universities and recognised by Forbes, MIT, the World Bank and Tech4Good.