Hi Elisabeth, No - I wasn't thinking about it for travelers (if you mean international travelers - although I suppose they might use it too), but anyone who is visiting a town and needs to find a loo. And as well as finding the facility in the first place, I was thinking more as a means to monitor the quality of service provided by the operators of public toilet facilities (something like tripadvisor). If the facility is publicly owned but leased to an operator on a performance based contract, then the feedback from users could be one means to assess performance. regards, Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

I am not aware of something of equal level of detail as that toilet map in Britain which you linked to for other countries, let alone for a dynamic and fast-changing country like India...

You mean a map that shows the exact location of each public toilet? What would be the purpose of this? For travellers?

I can't imagine that anyone would build up a website for this but perhaps an App of some sort is feasible (where any user can take a photo of the toilet and quickly sends it to the App for storage).

I had a quick look in an earlier thread where we talked about sanitation related Apps but couldn't find anything that had gone beyond a pilot scale:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/161-sa...mit=12&start=24#8624

Perhaps someone else knows of further developments in that area?

Hello all,

I started looking at openstreetmap.org and came across this www.toiletmap.org/ (which has now been "closed") but this one greatbritishpublictoiletmap.rca.ac.uk/about has taken up the baton.

Looks good although could be developed further for people to be able to comment (similar to tripadvisor) and then annual awards/recognition for best public toilet.

But the main reason for the posting is to enquire if there are sites like this for other countries such as India.

regards,

Jonathan

p.s. there is a report on "Publicly Accessible Toilets - An Inclusive Design Guide" available from www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/CMS/files/Toilet_LoRes.pdf

While, we, Muslims, use water in latrines and, our religion demands us to maintain hygiene all the time, in and out of toilets, fecal-related infections are high in the rural areas of Sindh, Pakistan, primarily due to (a) non-availability of water; (b) maintaining unhygienic conditions; and (c) not washing hands with soap, after toilet use.

F H Mughal

Not that I am aware of, but using a latrine doesn't necessarily result in that. Some latrines can be even health hazards The toilet data purely describes the presence of toilets, not their intended effect (which might not might not actually materialize).

P.S.: One of the maps I was referring to earlier:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/M..._religions_India.png

JKMakowka wrote: Regarding the "religious duty", well from my experience in Pakistan at least, Muslims to weight latrine use with proper anal clensing quite heavily, which is probably a factor to take into account.

Does Pakistan (or other Muslim country) have dramatically lower incidence of faeces-derived infection than comparable countries?

I was purely going off maps that showed areas with significant portions of populations following a religion other than Hinduism and the correlation with the toilet data was quite striking I think, especially for the Christians and Sikhs, but also for Muslims and (to a lesser extend) Buddhists (which to my experience from Nepal at least, is often a second religion to Hinduism that people practice also the same time, which could maybe explain that). So other factors you mentioned should not really matter in that direct correlation.

Regarding the "religious duty", well from my experience in Pakistan at least, Muslims do weight latrine use with proper anal clensing quite heavily, which is probably a factor to take into account.

But it would be great if someone would actually sit down with the numbers and do a proper correlation of data-sets, as well as do a "reliability" of data analysis (there are obviously some data errors in the toilet data set).

I'm no statistician, but the first thing I'd be wanting to know is about the reliability of the dataset. Maybe it is easier to survey and check the sanitation in cities than in rural areas. Maybe some individuals in some places are more likely to lie about their sanitation (for various reasons) than those in other areas.

Regarding religion, I think this is a difficult issue. Again, I don't know this for a fact, but it is possible that some religions are more present in rural over urban environments, and hence it a appears to have a disproportionate effect.

I'm not aware of any particular cultural/religious sanitation habits that are more likely to lead to more use of toilets (but, hey, what a wonderful idea. Using a toilet as a religious duty..). I'd think that this had more to do with education than religion.

That's an interesting graphic, but it lacks the option to compare it to other data.

I did a quick visual comparison with population density, but that doesn't really explain the distribution fully (to some limited extend). And given these disparities and knowing that densely populated really doesn't mean "better off" in India at all, I did some other totally non-scientific visual comparisons.

To conclude: the toilet data seems to correlate the best with high percentages of religions other than Hinduism (e.g. Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Sikhs; in no specific order). Not sure what to make of that, and I certainly don't want this to turn into any finger-pointing... but it looks a bit like that. (source: random maps found via Google image search).

If you like stats you will enjoy this interactive toilet map of India
Enjoy
toilettrail.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/a-t...a-by-datastories-in/