The project has generated an exciting amount of press interest. Following a press release from Bristol University, the project was picked up by websites including the BBC and Technology Horizons. It also gained interest from the Institute of Women Engineers.

See the articles below for more information.

Since returning to England, the team have been meeting and updating everyone who’s been involved with the project at the Bristol end, including supportive Bristol academics, the Bristol University Press Office, and our industry links (including Sutton and East Surrey Water, and Thames Water). We're very keen to keep up the project momentum, and need to enlist new, young enthusiastic students at the beginning of next year to ensure the success of the Havana Water Project over the next few years, and also to set up more academic and project links both with CUJAE and with other foreign universities.

New Student Input
The team will be looking for new students to join next year to help continue the research and progress further to building up a working prototype. All the Bristol team members will be beginning the third years of their degrees in September 2006, and getting new, younger member involved is imperative to ensure the life of the project. We are also looking forward to the new ideas and enthusiam which new members will contribute.

We will be strongly supported by the Cuban team throughout next year, and expect communications between the teams to prove far easier this year now that the teams have met and worked face-to-face.

Presentations in Autumn Term
Presentations summarising the project will be given early on in the Autumn term in the Faculty of Engineering. It is provisionally planned to give two presentations – one at a lunchtime for the student body, and a more-specialised evening talk aimed primarily at the Civil Engineering department but with everyone welcome.

Mondialogo Engineering Award
We’ve received the publicity materials and information from the Mondialogo Foundation which will be distributed appropriately in September when the new University term begins. We hope to have at least one Bristol team involved with the Mondialogo programmes.

Academic Projects
Research areas from the Havana Water Project are being being taken up as third-year academic projects in 2006-07, including a project researching into detecting and identifying leaks through vibration analysis. The results obtained through this will indicate whether it could be both possible and feasible to detect leaks in this way, and will have important consequences on the development of the project.

PITAD
Over the last two years, members of EWB-Bristol and led by Carlos Fernandez-Aballi have been setting up PITAD (Platform for the Implementation of Appropriate Development Technologies). This is an umbrella organisation designed to provide much-needed links between charitable organisations such as EWB, industrial partner companies, and universities around the world, to help create engineering solutions for global development.

Trip information will be posted here shortly

In June and July 2006, four students from the new team at Bristol University travelled out to Havana to meet and work with their counterparts in CUJAE.

The trip was highly successful, and the teams in CUJAE and Bristol both feel very positively towards its progress in the next academic year.

Keep checking to see an overview diary and updates on the trip's outcomes.

Throughout the first half of 2006, the teams worked to focus their research and ideas.

It soon became apparent that both teams would strongly benefit from face-to-face meetings, particularly if the Bristol team could also see at first hand the problems experienced in Havana.

It was decided that the overall project idea would be to create a sensor network which could feed back real-time information allowing the water distribution system of Havana to be controlled and optimised whilst allowing unaccountable for water (due to leaks, water corruption and inaccurate measurement) to be minimised.

After speaking with the local water company 'Aguas de la Habana' and the team at CUJAE university, permission was granted to use the closed DMA (District Metered Area) of CUJEA "José Antonio Echeverría" college campus as a prototype area. This DMA has a catchment of approximately 5000 people and can be looked at as a small model of the whole city.

The photos included with this entry show leaks and their effects on the CUJAE campus.

After the Mondialogo Engineering Award 04/05 a new group of students was formed to continue with the project. The new team felt that the original project, while excellent, was quite broad and that their time and effort would be put to best use if they focussed in on a specific part of the project.

After much research and discussion, it was decided to look at the optimisation of Havana's water distribution system.

Platerform for the Implementation of Appropriate Development Technologies

* The idea of PiTAD is to provide a way for universities to join together in order to tackle some of the pressing problems faced in developed and developing countries by coming up with smart, appropriate and economically viable systems to each problem.