A life-cycle capacity-based approach to allocating investments in municipal sanitation infrastructure

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Capacity assessment
• Community capacity-building
• Developing communities
• Investment allocation
• Integrated sanitation systems
• Infrastructure management

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by a career grant from the US National Science Foundation (#9984318). The authors would like to thank Dr Yacov Haimes for his advice in formulating the planning model.