and Environmental Engineering.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere and cannot afford conventional means of water treatment. Consequently, waterborne disease causes great suffering and death throughout the Haitian community. This research effort investigates using solar disinfection or SODIS for point-of-use water treatment in Haiti, which can provide disease-free water at the cost of a plastic bottle. The SODIS treatment process consists of filling plastic bottles with water and exposing them to sunlight. SODIS operates on the principle that sunlight-induced DNA alteration, photo-oxidative destruction, and thermal effects will inactivate microorganisms. To achieve adequate disinfection, an area should receive at least 500 W/m2 of radiation for 5 hours. Haiti and other developing countries do not have sufficient meteorological data to assess if they meet this threshold. A mathematical model is presented, calibrated, and used to simulate monthly average, minimum, and maximum daily sunlight intensity profiles to estimate if Haiti would be suitable for SODIS. This method is general in that it can be used to simulate sunshine intensity profiles anywhere in the world per degree longitude and latitude. The sunshin