AOWIS – Afritic Open Standard for Water & Agricultural Infrastructure

AOWIS is an open technical standard for safe and reliable water and agricultural infrastructure, designed for low-resource environments.

It defines how systems are operated through sensors and actuators, either autonomously, manually, or in combination. AOWIS is designed to function under conditions such as unstable power, limited connectivity, and minimal technical support, supporting both online and offline operation.

Motivation

In less developed regions, such as rural areas and small towns in Africa, water distribution remains a significant challenge. While NGOs have been successfully supporting communities for decades by drilling wells, installing pumps, and sometimes building water towers, distributing water across a network on the surface is often difficult.

Local initiatives that take on these projects frequently encounter a situation where operating the system manually becomes unsustainable, requiring constant attention. Qualified personnel are scarce, and suitable technology to support automated or semi-automated operation is either unavailable under local constraints or too expensive.

This is where AOWIS aims to contribute: by providing an open standard for designing, deploying, and managing water and agricultural infrastructure in such environments. AOWIS supports both the planning phase—helping initiatives evaluate and design systems based on regional conditions such as topography—and the operational phase, including system monitoring, control, and maintenance.

In addition, AOWIS aims to support the training of local technicians and to collaborate closely with experienced NGOs and local initiatives that already operate and maintain such systems, in order to improve sustainability and reduce operational burden.

Operation Conditions of AOWIS

AOWIS is designed to operate under the real-world conditions faced by local initiatives. These include, among others:

unreliable power supply
intermittent connectivity
diverse or aging equipment
limited availability of trained personnel
the need for safety and autonomous operation

AOWIS enables systems that continue to function safely and reliably, even under degraded or adverse conditions.

Facing the Challenges

AOWIS addresses these operational challenges through the following principles:

human-in-the-loop control
offline-first operation
safe fallback behavior
modular and extensible logic
shared infrastructure models
transparent governance

The goal is to make essential systems robust, maintainable, and locally operable.

How AOWIS Works

AOWIS is built around a three‑layer control model:

Field Controller – Local, autonomous, safety‑critical
Farm Controller – Coordination, scheduling, logic
HQ Controller – Oversight, reporting, governance

Core principles include:

Offline‑first
Measurement‑driven
Fail‑safe by design
Human‑operable at all times
Modular and extensible
Transparent and auditable

Start Here

If you are new to AOWIS, begin with:

These pages explain how to read, use, and contribute to the standard.

Access the Standard

The AOWIS standard is organized into dedicated namespaces. These sections form the technical backbone of the project.

Standard – Normative requirements and definitions
Concepts – Philosophy, rationale, and real-world context
Architecture – System structure and controller design
Infrastructure – Physical systems and components
Measurement – Sensors, manual readings, derived values
Data – Data models, logs, sync formats
Operations – Runtime logic and decision hierarchy
Modules – Domain-specific extensions
Reference – Concrete examples, reference implementations, sample systems
Databases – Federated knowledge bases
Governance – Certification, compliance, licensing
Training – Human capacity building

For a full overview, see the Table of Contents.

Governance & Legitimacy

AOWIS includes a transparent governance model to ensure:

open participation
clear certification processes
stable versioning
long‑term protection of the standard

See: Governance.

Roadmap

At this stage AOWIS is in early development and conceptualization phase. The next steps for the technical development are:

Developing sensors to measure water level in reservoires.
Developing sensors to measure voltage to protect devices from overvoltage and to calculate solar battery capacities.

 * Find ways how to shut down from electricity supply in case of overvoltage.

Navigation

AOWIS is an open, evolving standard. Contributions are welcome.