As one of the southern regions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the Aseer region suffers from a lack of water for certain periods during the year. This causes a congestion of citizens at the water station to buy water to be delivered in tankers to their reservoir at home . This process wasted a lot of time and effort to deliver the water to their homes.

Challenges:

• Solving the problem of long queues of citizens waiting to reserve a delivery of water to their home reservoir.
• Lack of water in the homes of citizens in the region of Aseer, resulting in many problems both to the families and the municipality.
• Find an alternative solution to reserve water tankers with an easier, orderly and more effective way.

Solution: An online water tanker reservation system

This meets the wishes of citizens to reserve water tankers without the need to go to the station and stand in a queue for a long period of time, thereby allowing the citizen to use their time more effectively.

Solution Objectives:

• Organize the process of reserving water by the public.
• Saving the citizens’ wasted time and effort.
• Reducing congestion and crowding in front of the water stations.
• Reducing the time spent by the Aseer water stations’ employees in organizing water deliveries.

Technologies:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• Microsoft .NET Framework
• Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2005

Benefits:

• Now citizens spend far less time reserving and obtaining water for their homes.
• The citizen can track the delivery time of the tanker so does not waste time waiting for the tanker.
• The employees are better able to manage the water tankers and plan how many tankers they need for the coming days.
• Now the water station can plan for their needs and manage them more efficiently.
• The cycle of reserving and getting the water tanker is now well defined which allows the citizens to reserve the next tanker before the water is finished, thus ensuring that they have water at all times.

Quotes:

• “This system is wonderful, it enabled us to save our time and effort in getting the water tankers, it cost us a lot of time to get the tanker before, sometimes it exceeded half a day waiting for it in the station, now you know the delivery time for your reserved tanker, now you don’t spend more than half hour” Said one citizen.
• “It was always a problem for the citizens because we didn’t have a plan for our needs and there was always a shortage, no one could get the reserved tanker in a determined time, but now it becomes very easy to plan and schedule” Water directorate manager said

“I’m proud of being a part of this system, it is really a powerful tool to help the society, when you are dealing with a wonderful system like this” IT Manager said.