Challenge

When disasters damage roads, pipelines and treatment infrastructure, communities can lose access to safe drinking water within hours. Across Asia and the Pacific, around 1.5 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, while 232 million lack even basic drinking water services. Climate-related disasters can further exacerbate these existing gaps, leaving families reliant on contaminated sources, costly bottled water or waiting for infrastructure that can take months to restore.

Rural communities face a quieter version of the same problem. Centralised water systems are expensive to construct and difficult to maintain across remote areas. Climate-related disasters are making these gaps more urgent, while conflict and disrupted supply routes can delay humanitarian responses.

The challenge is not simply treating water. It is getting reliable treatment to the point of need quickly enough to protect communities.

Solution

Wateroam developed the ROAMfilter™ Plus as a decentralised water treatment solution designed for remote communities and emergency response.

Compact and portable, the system can be transported to locations where large conventional water treatment infrastructure may be difficult or time-consuming to deploy. Water can be treated through manual pumping, an electric pump or gravity feed, allowing the system to operate under different field conditions.

At the core of the system is hollow-fibre ultrafiltration technology that removes microbial contaminants from untreated water.

The ROAMfilter™ Plus was evaluated under the World Health Organization’s International Scheme to Evaluate Household Water Treatment Technologies and Wateroam's system has met WHO performance criteria and classified it as providing Comprehensive Protection.

The technology is designed not simply for deployment, but for continued use. Wateroam works with humanitarian organisations, governments and community partners to train local operators in system operation, maintenance and troubleshooting, while providing replacement components and technical support. This decentralised model allows safe-water treatment to be brought closer to the point of need instead of relying solely on large treatment plants or transported bottled water.

Impact

In 2025, Wateroam’s systems reached 162,085 people. Each deployment tells a different story of water returning.

After the earthquake in Myanmar on March 28, 2025, Wateroam worked with humanitarian partners to deploy portable filtration systems to affected communities where water infrastructure had been disrupted. Its filtration systems, and the ability to transport and operate them with limited supporting infrastructure, provided safe water to more than 40,000 people. In Indonesia, where over 20,000 people were served during the year, deployments brought treated water to communities facing both recurring access gaps and sudden flooding.

Across schools, rural hospitals and health centres in Laos, Wateroam’s filtration technology has been deployed to strengthen access to safe drinking water for healthcare facilities and the communities they serve. These deployments demonstrate how decentralised water treatment can support not only emergency response, but also longer-term access to safe water in areas where existing infrastructure may be limited or unreliable.

The environmental implications extend beyond emergency response. A ROAMfilter™ Plus is designed for a treatment capacity of up to one million litres over its operating life under appropriate conditions. In volume terms, this is equivalent to approximately two million 500ml bottles of water. The actual reduction in single-use plastic depends on how the system is deployed and what alternative water supply would otherwise have been used.

Across these settings, the technology provides communities and responding organisations with another option for restoring safe-water access without waiting for major infrastructure to be rebuilt.

Future Outlook

Wateroam is continuing to expand production and distribution of its ROAMfilter™ and Homefilter™ technologies as demand for decentralised water treatment grows across Southeast Asia.

In Indonesia, the company is strengthening its local presence, partnerships and technical support capabilities to improve deployment, training and after-sales maintenance. Wateroam is also working with government agencies, humanitarian organisations, healthcare institutions and community partners to develop longer-term approaches to disaster preparedness and resilient water access. An important part of this strategy is building local capability. Rather than relying solely on Wateroam personnel, local technicians and Singapore community operators are trained to manage and maintain systems independently.

Over the longer term, Wateroam aims to provide safe drinking water access to 30 million people by 2030. For Wateroam, the goal is not simply to deliver filtration equipment after a disaster. It is to help create a model in which communities can restore safe-water access rapidly, maintain it locally and become more resilient to future disruptions.