Tanzania faces critical challenges with water access as thousands of waterpoints are non-functional, leaving communities without reliable water. This project builds a machine learning model to predict waterpoint operational status, enabling the government and NGOs to prioritize maintenance and allocate resources efficiently.
# Water Pump Functionality Prediction
A supervised machine learning project to classify the operational condition of waterpoints across Tanzania.
## Table of Contents
- Problem Statement
- Dataset Overview
- Type of ML Problem
- Project Folder Structure
- ML Workflow
- Model Deployment with Flask
- Notes & Hints
- Deliverables Checklist
## Problem Statement
Access to clean and functional water is a critical challenge across many parts of Tanzania. Thousands of waterpoints, wells, boreholes, communal standpipes and more have been installed across the country, but a significant number are either non-functional or in need of repair, leaving communities without reliable water access.
### Objective
Build a machine learning model that predicts the operational condition of a waterpoint given a set of features describing its location, management, water source and technical setup. Accurate predictions can help the Tanzanian government and NGOs prioritise maintenance efforts and allocate resources more efficiently.
### Target Variable
The model must classify each waterpoint into one of three categories:
| Label | Description |
|-------|-------------|
| functional | The waterpoint is operational and needs no repairs |
| functional needs repair | The waterpoint is operational but requires repairs |
| non functional | The waterpoint is not operational |
## Dataset Overview
**Important Note on Dataset Files:** The dataset is split across two separate files:
- `train.csv` - Contains all the input features for each waterpoint
- `labels.csv` - Contains the target column (`status_group`) for each waterpoint
Both files share a common `id` column. You must merge/join them on `id` as your very first step before any exploration or modelling.
### Feature Columns
| Column | Description | Example Value |
|--------|-------------|---------------|
| amount_tsh | Total static head — amount of water available to the waterpoint | 300.0 |
| date_recorded | Date the row was entered i …