Dear SuSanA-City people,

I am excited by the application for Environmental Health Risk Assessment (EHRA) to support city sanitation planning and it's potential as a tool for 'sanitation safety planning'. This is an area that WHO and IWA are both interested in and work is underway to produce a methodology for this purpose. But this is not altogether new as there are however existing experiences such as in Indonesia. For more information, please see :

www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Arti...AStudyImplementation for more information.

I see this approach providing an "entry point" into the complexities urban sanitation sector insofar as the mean in which local stakeholders can identify where the problems lie (both geographically and the main causal factors); leading to a diagnostic and a discussion about roles and responsibilities in dealing with the problems. (Note that this is different from water safety planning which starts with a better defined system (both physically and institutionally).

We have organised a couple of interested workshops recently. One at the UNC Water and Health conference and one at the IWA Water Safety Planning conference in Kampala. You can see the presentation on IWA's WaterWiki :

www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Even...tationSafetyPlanning

www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Even...tationSafetyPlanning

I'd be interested in your feedback on this and any experiences that you have to share.

best regards,

Jonathan

Dr. Jonathan Parkinson
Programmes Manager

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I joined the recent workshop on this in Kampala... interesting framework/concept for sure, however maybe suffering from being too broad of a topic to properly implement.
But I am definitly going to follow this closely.

Could you pl share some more details on this framework?

please refer to the original posting with links on IWA's WaterWiki.

Thanks for the feedback. Í'd be interested to hear more from you about why you consider the framework to be too broad. It covers toilets, fecal sludge, wastewater and solid waste management as it is generally a combination of these that result in the environmental health risks. I'd also encourage you to review experiences from Indonesia where something similar has already been applied to good effect. Please see www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Arti...AStudyImplementation for more information about this. regards, Jonathan

From what I have heard during the Kampala workshop, the concept is based (amongst other influences) on the WHO Water Safety Plan guideline. Compared to it (which is very hardware and O&M focused) assessing environmental health risks need to take much more outside(!) factors into account.

For example take flood risks due to stormwater; first of all it is already difficult to properly assess (or model), and then due to unplanned and rapidly expanding cities the impacts of it can change within months.
So unless significant man-hours and money are put into these plans and an update is done more or less constantly, they run the risk of being just another nice (and outdated) report on the shelf of a sewer utility.

So, I think it is a very interesting concept for sure, and when you are aware of it's potential shortcomings and dangers, it will definitely improve the sanitary conditions of a city.
However if I look at how WSP are promoted for each and every (small) water supply system, and seeing that this (in comparison) relatively simple concept is still often just a "dead piece of paper", I have my doubts that those "sanitary safety plans" will fare much better.

Dear all, I think some people had some difficulty with the links in the previous posting. please try again. thanks Jonathan

www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Even...tationSafetyPlanning

www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Even...tationSafetyPlanning

a very interesting response... many thanks. Although we are working with WHO with the aim to develop a methodology that is endorsed by WHO/IWA, I wouldn't say that the risk framework is too closely based on the WHO Water Safety Plan guideline. As you point out, the risk framework for sanitation needs to be different because the system itself and the institutional responsibilities are very different. This is why the way that we are developing the methodology is not to be fixed on a specific institution. Instead we perceive the need for a City Sanitation working group (as seen in Indonesia for example) to lead on the sanitation safety planning process. Also, we place emphasis on compounding causal factors which are those determinants of the environmental situation which accentuate environmental health risks related to sanitation - but are not explicitly related to sanitation (e.g. sanitation problems are worse in poorly drained areas as you mention). However, this is not to say that we have got it 100% right. We are a long way off and it is therefore very important to listen to your feedback and concerns as we are still in the process of development of the methodology and we have the opportunity to ensure that we respond to the points that you raise. best regards. Jonathan Parkinson - IWA.

Julius,

We are planning to bring this methodology to Kampala to test and discuss its viability. We will be working on this with Charles Niwagaba from Makerere University, who I am sure you know well.

We are planning an initial workshop on October 8th and then another one in mid-November to present the outcome of the rapid assessment of risks according in the two areas which we aim to apply the methodology and also the municipal systems (as described in the attached project brief and a paper presented at the WEDC conference a couple of months ago).

I hope therefore you will be able to attend and we can discuss further.

best regards,

Jonathan

Ah, great! Thanks for the heads-up.

Yes I know Dr. Charles relatively well and I am starting to wonder how he manages all the projects he is involved in...

And yes, I will mark down the date and will hopefully find the time to attend.

I would also like to make you aware that there are currently some Swiss researchers here (SANDEC/EAWAG affiliated) that (I think) are doing a quite extensive health impact study on urban farming in the wetland areas of Kampala (which act as a sort of in-official "waste-water treatment system" for most of Kampala). I believe this might be highly relevant as an additional aspect.

When I am back in the office on Monday, I will get in contact with them and and get back to you via email to discuss the details of this further.

Dear Julius,

Many thanks for your comments/contributions and ongoing support to the our activities in Kampala with SSWARS focusing on the development and application of a methodology for assessing risks related to urban sanitation systems. Attached are the pdfs of the presentations that I gave at the workshop.

best regards,

Jonathan

Jonathan Parkinson PhD.
Programme Manager – Urban Sanitation Initiative

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Dear Dr. Jonathan Parkinson,

Would it be possible for IWA to conduct a short-course, or a workshop on this (HRA) topic at IWA HQs? You can request DFID, ADB or WB for funding. Resource persons from WEDC, WELL, Leeds and Loughborough University can also join.

Regards,

F H Mughal