In the midst of war, where's the water? Syrians use digital map to find out

There has been little respite in recent years for Aleppo, Syria’s former commercial capital. The city is in dire straits, caught in the fighting between the opposition forces and troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

There is no let-up in the daily warfare, with airstrikes and shells across the frontlines, which has left the ancient city in ruins. Even the water supply has been disrupted repeatedly as different factions vie to punish the other side.

So, when the International Committee of the Red Cross visited the city early on in the war, they saw an opportunity to improve one aspect of life for civilians after meeting the local water board and finding out that the city had a vast network of water boreholes that were lying neglected.

“Together with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, we said ‘OK, let’s refurbish them and create sustainable water points in case Aleppo was cut [off] from water’,” says Pawel Krzysiek, the ICRC’s spokesman in Syria.

That happened this summer, when residents of Aleppo had to endure three weeks of water cuts throughout the city. Then in early July the ICRC decided to publish a basic map showing the locations of water boreholes, complete with GPS coordinates, on its Facebook page.

“We were overwhelmed,” says Krzysiek. “It went viral.” Soon the ICRC was flooded with questions on whether various boreholes were usable and if they were in locations that were safe from the fighting.

“It gave us the feedback so we could send our engineers and improve the operation,” he says. “Humanitarian work is far from perfect and their voices actually help us make it better.”

But getting the information to Aleppo’s millions of residents, who are constantly being displaced with little access to technology and barely any internet, was a greater challenge.

Since most Syrians tend to use Facebook and 3G network access to communicate, the organisation created a web app that shows the GPS coordinates of the boreholes in relation to the mobile phone user, allowing them to quickly find the closest water source during a siege, and published the link on Facebook, relying on word of mouth among the tech-savvy residents still in the city.