The following maps are intended for large screens and may appear crowded on laptops. As the map shows a large amount of data, it takes some time to load - please be patient.
Examine the distribution of acces to safe water around the world - and find out more by clicking on the countries. You can choose between different topics to visualise water quality and its different parameters. Follow the instructions in the Charts-window to access a visualisation of the development over the years for selected countries.
The information pop-up guides you through the steps - you can turn it on and off manually.
For the worldwide data, different visualisations are possible. With 'water is safely managed', the WHO categorises when the water source is accessible on premises, available when needed and free from priority and faecal chemical contamination. The WHO further categorises 'basic water access' to be no more than 30min by foot away from ones home. 'Water is safely piped' regards the supply of drinking water which prevents the water from contamination.
The averages for the countries on the map above are provided by the WHO. On a global scale, it's distribution can be seen easily. Access on premises is improving worldwide. Regarding the contamination of water, China and Australia are both in the cateogry 'poor' while northern Africa seams to fare better in inspection of the data available. Access alone is therefore not everything for safe water.
The dataset 'access to water is at least basic' show to be the most complete subject in terms of data available. For the most part, the access to water is gloabally at least passable, with the northern hemisphere showing better scores overall. In the African context, the northern part shows overall the best water safety indicators.
In the European context, the biggest variation in water safety is also seen with the subject of contamination: it's development is dynamic over time. Overall, Europe shows great water quality over the various subjects. Examine it in a closer perspective with the following map.
With the focus on Europe, differences between the countries become more apparent. Take a look at the water quality in the different European countries, and compare it with the view from a global perspective.
In the same manner as above, find information and further directions by clicking on the menu in the map.
The map shows data from the EU plus Albania and Switzerland.
The development over time lets us be optimistic. All countries have improved their water safety and quality and more and more people have easy access to it. In a worldwide perspective, the continent Africa stands out as expected before, but also there the situation is turning for the better. Still, there is room for improvement. South-East Asia and parts of South America are alongside the continent of Africa the regions with the lowest indicators.
With the Mercator Projection, as it's the common default in web-mapping, the spatial distortion is evenly spread out over the world and let's us see patterns in neighbouring countries as it's not changing the shape.
For Europe, we didn't find the same data, but were able to visualise the distribution of the bathing water around the continent. This is also a way to see sustainable water management, as the usage of those contributes to the wellbeing of the people. Coastla water shows to be the water with the highest quality, as the exchange with the open sea surely helps to keep it clean. Yet, we all have heard of dirty beaches and human-made pollution- this was not included in the data and could be further investigated.
Already in the early 2000s, the water quality shows to be of a good standard in Europe - with the exceptions of Poland, Belgium and Hungary. Nevertheless, those also cathced up and now have good to excellent bathing water quality.
What would also be an interesting point would be the drinkability of tap water in Europe. Although efforts have been made towards that goal, many people are still reserved to use it as actual drinking water and continue buying it in bottles. This has been shown to be problematic practice especially for the countries and regions where the bottling of the water takes place.
The European data and visualisation is once again an implementation for a whole country. We can see some differences between the different types of bathing water, but a further investigation into the countries themselves would provide more detailed insight.