Targeting urban sanitation – looking behind aggregated city-level data

Targeting urban sanitation – looking behind aggregated city-level data. World Bank Water Blog, Oct 31, 2016. 

In our previous blogs – Fecal Sludge Management: the invisible elephant in urban sanitation,  5 lessons to manage fecal sludge better, and A tale of two cities: how cities can improve fecal sludge management – we outlined the neglect of Fecal Sludge Management (FSM) and presented new tools for diagnosing urban sanitation challenges and how they can be used.

Today, on World Cities Day, we are looking more deeply into a city – Lima, Peru, to shed light on how cities around the world can meet opportunities and address challenges of urbanization including providing improved sanitation for a rapidly growing number of urban residents.

The city-wide sanitation picture

To apply one of the better known FSM tools – the fecal waste flow diagram (SFD) – we use data to provide a city-wide picture of sanitation services at the household level, and how the fecal waste flows through the ‘sanitation service chain’: removal and conveyance from the household containment or WC, to treatment and final disposal or reuse.

SFDs provide an easy to understand and visual representation of where fecal waste and the associated pathogens and pollution end up. This enables decision-makers and technical staff to understand and discuss the priority sanitation issues requiring attention in their city.

Read the complete article.