40% of the world's population lacks access to adequate supplies of water and sanitation services to sustain human health. In fact, more than 780 million people lack access to safe water supplies and ...about 2.5 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Appropriate technology for water supply and sanitation (Watsan) systems is critical for sustained access to these services. Current approaches for the selection of Watsan technologies in developing communities have a high failure rate. It is estimated that 30%-60% of Watsan installed infrastructures in developing countries are not operating. Inappropriate technology is a common explanation for the high rate of failure of Watsan infrastructure, particularly in lower-income communities (Palaniappan et al., 2008). This paper presents the capacity factor analysis (CFA) model, for the assessment of a community's capacity to manage and sustain access to water supply and sanitation services. The CFA model is used for the assessment of a community's capacity to operate, and maintain a municipal sanitation service (MSS) such as, drinking water supply, wastewater and sewage treatment, and management of solid waste. The assessment of the community's capacity is based on seven capacity factors that have been identified as playing a key role in the sustainability of municipal sanitation services in developing communities (Louis, 2002). These capacity factors and their constituents are defined for each municipal sanitation service. Benchmarks and international standards for the constituents of the CFs are used to assess the capacity factors. The assessment of the community's capacity factors leads to determine the overall community capacity level (CCL) to manage a MSS. The CCL can then be used to assist the community in the selection of appropriate Watsan technologies for their MSS needs. The selection is done from Watsan technologies that require a capacity level to operate them that matches the assessed CCL of the community.
Cholera is a waterborne disease that continues to pose serious public health problems in many developing countries. Increasing water and sanitation coverage is a goal for local authorities in these ...countries, as it can eliminate one of the root causes of cholera transmission. The SIWDR (susceptible–infected–water–dumpsite–recovered) model is proposed here to evaluate the effects of the improved coverage of water and sanitation services in a community at risk of a cholera outbreak. This paper provides a mathematical study of the dynamics of the water and sanitation (WatSan) deficits and their public health impact in a community. The theoretical analysis of the SIWDR model gave a certain threshold value (known as the basic reproductive number and denoted
R
0
) to stop the transmission of cholera. It was found that the disease-free equilibrium was globally asymptotically stable whenever
R
0
≤
1
. The unique endemic equilibrium was globally asymptotically stable whenever
R
0
>
1
. Sensitivity analysis was performed to determine the relative importance of model parameters to disease transmission and prevention. The numerical simulation results, using realistic parameter values in describing cholera transmission in Haiti, showed that improving the drinking water supply, wastewater and sewage treatment, and solid waste disposal services would be effective strategies for controlling the transmission pathways of this waterborne disease.
Capacity Factor Analysis is a decision support system for selection of appropriate technologies for municipal sanitation services in developing communities. Developing communities are those that lack ...the capability to provide adequate access to one or more essential services, such as water and sanitation, to their residents. This research developed two elements of Capacity Factor Analysis: a capacity factor based classification for technologies using requirements analysis, and a matching policy for choosing technology options. First, requirements analysis is used to develop a ranking for drinking water supply and greywater reuse technologies. Second, using the Capacity Factor Analysis approach, a matching policy is developed to guide decision makers in selecting the appropriate drinking water supply or greywater reuse technology option for their community. Finally, a scenario-based informal hypothesis test is developed to assist in qualitative model validation through case study. Capacity Factor Analysis is then applied in Cimahi Indonesia as a form of validation. The completed Capacity Factor Analysis model will allow developing communities to select drinking water supply and greywater reuse systems that are safe, affordable, able to be built and managed by the community using local resources, and are amenable to expansion as the community’s management capacity increases.
Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) in the United States is a system comprised of regulatory, administrative, market, technology, and social subcomponents, and can only be understood in the ...context of its historical evolution. American cities lacked organized public works for street cleaning, refuse collection, water treatment, and human waste removal until the early 1800s. Recurrent epidemics forced efforts to improve public health and the environment. The belief in anticontagionism led to the construction of water treatment and sewerage works during the nineteenth century, by sanitary engineers working for regional public health authorities. This infrastructure was capital intensive and required regional institutions to finance and administer it. By the time attention turned to solid waste management in the 1880s, funding was not available for a regional infrastructure. Thus, solid waste management was established as a local responsibility, centred on nearby municipal dumps. George Waring of New York City organized solid waste management around engineering unit operations; including street sweeping, refuse collection, transportation, resource recovery and disposal. This approach was adopted nationwide, and was managed by City Departments of Sanitation. Innovations such as the introduction of trucks, motorized street sweepers, incineration, and sanitary landfill were developed in the following decades. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), is the defining legislation for MSWM practice in America today. It forced the closure of open dumps nationwide, and required regional planning for MSWM. The closure of municipal dumps caused a ‘garbage crisis’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Private companies assumed an expanded role in MSWM through regional facilities that required the transportation of MSW across state lines. These transboundary movements of MSW created the issue of flow control, in which the US Supreme Court affirmed the protection of garbage under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Thus MSWM in America today is largely managed by municipalities, and operated by a relatively small number of private companies. It consists of a mixture of landfill, incineration, recycling, and composting, and is regulated under RCRA, the Clean Air Act and other related federal and state laws.
Community water systems (CWS) face significant competing forces for change from decreasing water resource availability, stricter water quality regulations, decreasing federal subsidies, increasing ...public scrutiny, decreasing financial health, and increasing infrastructure replacement costs. These competing forces necessitate increasing consolidation responses among financially stressed CWS. Consolidation responses allow financially stressed CWS to increase levels of service by taking advantage of economy of scale benefits, such as eliminating service duplications across administration and operational functions. Consolidation responses also promote improved financial accountability among consolidating CWS, especially when operating as integral subsystems of a larger regional drinking water supply (RDWS) system. The goal of this paper is to propose a conceptual model for robust performance assessment and evaluation (PAE) among consolidating CWS. The objectives of this paper are to conceptualize methods for: (1) consistent performance assessment and (2) uniform summative performance evaluation among consolidating CWS. The expected outcome from implementing robust PAE among consolidating CWS is increased levels of service through transparent benchmarking and improved financial accountability. The proposed robust PAE model provides the basis for constructing decision support system (DSS) tools that estimate efficient solutions for allocating limited financial resources among consolidating CWS. The paper is a significant departure from current CWS PAE approaches in two ways. First, it provides a goal-oriented approach for robust PAE among consolidating CWS. Second, it constructs efficiency-based performance metrics to temporally and spatially monitor the degree of attainment of the RDWS systems' goal.
This paper presents a practical risk assessment methodology to provide drinking water infrastructure (DWI) decision-makers with an objective risk assessment tool. The purpose of this risk assessment ...tool is to maintain the desired level-of-service or systems reliability
r(
f), while managing the financial uncertainty of the expected budgetary impact within the capital improvement program (CIP). The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the value of an objective risk assessment tool for estimating the DWI decision-maker's sensitivity to the risk of systems failure (
R). The objectives are to: (1) incorporate probability of systems failure
p(
f) into the CIP budgetary analysis process and (2) evaluate the affects of
p(
f) on the expected CIP budgetary outcome. The magnitude of the expected budgetary impact is managed through the DWI decision-maker's sensitivity to
R, which is represented by the level of the rate of reinvestment (RR). The expected result of the proposed risk assessment tool demonstrates that by proactively managing
R to maintain a desired
r(
f) will effectively manage the impact of uncertainty on the expected budgetary outcome within the CIP. The expected contribution of the practical risk assessment methodology is to provide DWI decision-makers with the ability to reduce budgetary uncertainty when allocating limited financial resources among competing operational, repair, maintenance, and expansion activities within the CIP. The conclusions of the paper reveal that if DWI decision-makers assume risk-avoidance positions through proactive asset management (AM) strategies, they will achieve positive affects on expected budgetary outcomes.
The lack of access to water and sanitation services is a well-acknowledged problem that affects more than 40% of the world's people, who live in its poorest communities. Providing sustained access to ...infrastructure services in these communities requires approaches that build local capacity to acquire, build, and manage the systems that provide these services. This paper presents a pedagogical model that spans the lifecycle of sanitation infrastructure acquisition by communities with chronic inaccessibility to water and sanitation services. The pedagogy consists of community capacity assessment, service technology systems evaluation, and sequential allocation of capital investments to expand the capacity for water supply, wastewater and sewage treatment, and solid waste management infrastructure in affected communities. The allocation sequence covers a system lifecycle that allows the deficit in services in a community to be reduced to an acceptable minimum.
Infrastructure projects in rural communities usually cost more and benefit fewer people than similar projects in urban or large communities. Because they have relatively low ratios of benefits to ...costs, small‐scale investments in water and sanitation infrastructure are difficult to justify by standard benefit‐cost ratio criteria. Strategic risk management (SRM) enhances standard cost‐benefit analysis by including economic, social, and environmental benefits and subtracting the value of volunteer labor from costs. When the life‐cycle benefits of small projects are factored in, their benefit‐cost ratio increases, as does their appeal as public investments. SRM was applied to a program in Virginia (Self‐Help Virginia SHV) that helps residents of small rural communities secure funding and implement solutions for local development problems. Since its establishment in 1998, SHV has helped small and low‐ to moderate‐income communities build water and sanitation infrastructure, spending just $3.1 million on projects conventionally estimated to cost $8.8 million. Program funds pay for the hardware required, and the community provides labor and other resources needed to complete the project, gaining skills, experience, and other benefits in the process. SRM is a perfect match for SHV programs because the risk‐based approach includes both these overlooked benefits as well as the hidden costs of risk avoidance when an infrastructure problem goes unresolved. For state‐level decision‐makers, the enhanced cost‐benefit analysis provided by SRM makes small‐scale projects more competitive and easier to justify. Utility managers can use SRM analysis to better evaluate competing projects and effectively leverage their investments.
The public water supply sector is facing significant external pressures for change from decreasing water resource availability, stricter water quality regulations, decreasing federal subsidies, ...increasing public scrutiny, decreasing financial health, and increasing infrastructure replacement costs. These forces necessitate greater accountability by community water systems (CWS) to their stakeholders.
This paper presents a method for comparative efficiency analysis to improve the accountability of CWS to their stakeholders while maintaining the level of service. The method is achieved through three objectives, namely: (1) to construct standard efficiency metric parameters based on the techniques of data envelopment analysis; (2) to incorporate these uniform efficiency metric parameters into a transparent decision support system (DSS) based on the standard linear programming resource allocation problem; and (3) to utilize the DSS to determine the efficient allocation of limited budgetary resources among CWS operating as a regional water system (RWS).
The paper is a significant departure, in three ways, from the current planning and management approach, which treats CWS as independent entities. First, it provides an open and transparent method for planning and management of CWS; second, it provides a uniform and consistent method for evaluating relative efficiencies across the CWS. Third, the DSS facilitates comparative efficiency analysis across the RWS, and guides financial allocation decisions among CWS operating as a RWS.
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