Brief profile of study areas

This project attempts to identify the optimal scale of community infrastructure that can simultaneously improve water and energy supplies in marginalized developing-world communities. The project is motivated by the Solar Water Pumping System (SWPS) developed in Nepal. While the capital cost of such community-scale projects can be relatively low, when scaled-up for larger social contexts, such projects increase social transaction costs of decision-making and operation, as they require comprehensive consideration of education, religion, social class, and social norms. This project investigates the tradeoff s surrounding community infrastructure works in three marginalized communities: (1) high mountain villages in Nepal; (2) “floating people” of Inlay Lake, Myanmar; and (3) small remote islands in Indonesia.