In the middle of a heat wave, staying hydrated is more than vital. If water runs out when you are outside, a map lists drinking water points according to the location of each person.
We think about taking our water bottle, but rarely where to fill it. Finding a drinking water fountain when you are far from home or in an unfamiliar neighborhood is not so simple but vital in times of extreme heat like at the moment. Nicolas Bartos, a 46-year-old developer based in Saint-Orens-de-Gameville in Haute-Garonne, wanted to change that. He launched a card accessible from the phone and free. It lists 30,923 drinking water points in France.
The body loses a lot of water when it is hot. If we don’t drink enough, dehydration occurs and it can be serious. Also, it is essential to drink fluids throughout the day. Thanks to Nicolas Bartos’ map, it’s possible. The principle is simple: you just have to download the application he created, “Thirsty”, and geolocate yourself. A map displays nearby public fountains in seconds, with the walking distance to each. Nicolas Bartos started from a simple observation: this equipment already exists everywhere, it is just invisible. The platform helps to promote them and make them accessible to everyone.
The data comes directly from the municipalities, via the public platform Data.gouv.fr. Since 2018, local authorities have had the obligation to make available to the public the data produced as part of their public service missions – which includes the location of their fountains and standpipes. It is this base that Thirsty exploits. The data comes from the municipalities themselves, and reliability is based on what they have published.
The application has a limitation for the moment: it only shows water points around the location where the user is located, without the possibility of searching across an entire municipality. A future version will allow searching by municipality, assures its creator to France 3 Occitanie, which is also preparing a participatory rating system. Each time they are used, users will be asked to evaluate the cleanliness, accessibility and temperature of the fountain – a way of making the data more reliable over time.
Thirsty is not the first of its kind – there already exists Owater and FreeTaps on the same principle. But behind hydration, Nicolas Bartos has a second objective: to encourage the use of reusable bottles. For him, each filled bottle is a plastic bottle potentially avoided. By facilitating access to existing water points, it hopes to contribute to the reduction of waste and encourage more sustainable habits.
