Dear all

Thanks for your various posts!

If your are interested in the resources referred to in the CSTEP Sanitaiton Compendium you can find many of them online together with further readings and related weblinks on the SSWM Toolbox.

The new Decision and Assessment Portal are good news too! This complements what there is already on the Toolbox:
Planning and Process Tools
www.sswm.info/category/planning-process-...s-tools-introduction

There can not be enough of examples of good resources to support planning in sustainable sanitation!
I hope many additional initiatives are joining the collection of tools already online and that the articles can be completed soon. As they complete and show application on the field, we may also consider integrating some of the resource as a Tool on the SSWM Toolbox. Are there already some case studies available on the portal?

Kind regards
Dorothee

Dear Sujaya and dear Hans,

Thanks for your excellent work. This Decision & Assessment Tools (guidelines) are a good and rational starting point for project/system planning, but just from the very rational points of engineering and probably economical budget estimations too.

I regret, at least my project and life experiences in this area are much different, excellent decision & assessment guidelines like yours are not enough!

If it it comes to the point of making The Decisions, simple engineering/economical rationalities are not enough, they are fading away very fast. Especial if you deal with large scale project/systems with a lot of tax-payers money involved, already during necessary preliminary Assessment time "things" and project directions will become very irrational. In my opinion, it is more about "special interests", power and politics with all its hidden agendas them about excellent Decision & Assessment Tools (guidelines).

Maybe in an idealistic world it will be very different...

I regret, I do not have a rational solution at hand.

All the Best
Detlef

Dear Hans,
That is really good news. We would really appreciate if our humble work could be of use to members in Susana and others working in this area. We would love to have this review work on akvopedia. Please let me know what are the next steps, and what you would like us to do.

As mentioned in the Review of Support Resources in Sanitation, we did this initial work to understand what is out there and what these tools are addressing and where we could really make a contribution without reinventing the wheel.

We are now in the process of developing a Proof of Concept Tool for Integrated Sanitation Investment Planning - focusing on looking at sanitation systems (not one technology), and comparing the different systems with respect to different indicators.

We are now working on a V2 of the tool and will have it ready end June/early July and will post the approach and the version of the tool too on Susana and also send it to you.

Thanks and look forward to knowledge sharing.

Thanks
Sujaya

Dear Sujaya,

Thanks for your posting. We are interested in creating a new wiki page introducing your work within the Sanitation pillar within www.akvopedia.org/wiki/Decision_%26_Assessment_Tools

As you can see we've only just started with this new portal within Akvopedia and we would like to support SuSanA members in spreading the news/sharing knowledge. We as Akvo Foundation can deliver editorial support to you.

Kind rgrds

Hans

We most certainly intend to expand the sanitation section in cooperation with SuSanA, this is just the start. Together with the SuSanA secretariat we have been working on a number of tools supporting easy content contribution to the sanitation section by SuSanA members. This homework is near to completion and will be communicated this month. So we will continue to expand this new portal and any support from you/other SuSanA members would be great. We can deliver editorial support to get things published in wiki format.

Thanks and rgrds

Hans

Hi Hans - nice initiative!

Shockingly few tools on sanitation though... Are you trying to expand this? Do you actively search for other tools or are you waiting for creators or users to submit tools to you?

Introducing a new Akvopedia Akvopedia portal to guide our users through critical water and sanitation choices. The Decision & Assessment Tools portal Decision & Assessment Tools has 21 tools, some of which originate from our other portals and some brand new to Akvopedia, consolidated into the new portal for convenience. With so much information on the web coming from the thousands of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) organisations around the world, users need to know how best to navigate the information stream.

Any comments are most welcome.

rgrds

Hans Merton

Thanks for this, Sujaya.

We are grateful for your research in this space and for sharing your findings widely. We're learning from you and others who are taking the time to learn about local challenges, systems, opportunities and collaboratively work toward new, more sustainable approaches.

We look forward to seeing CSTEP's integrated modeling platform when it comes out!

Dear all,
This is my first posting in SUSANA, whereby I am posting a report along with a Compendium. This report is a prelude to the development of a Proof of Concept (PoC) decision support tool by Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) that will aid cities in providing cost-effective, inclusive and sustainable sanitation options for all with a particular emphasis on the urban poor. This is proposed to be achieved through an integrated assessment framework of alternative sanitation technologies. This is part of a project that we are involved with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Compendium consists of a bibliography of about 70+ existing support resources that we reviewed, including benchmarks, guides/manual, case studies, and evaluation tools.

The initial feedback about the Compendium that we circulated at the RTTF 2014, was that it is very useful. We would like this to be a living document, would be great if all resources that aid decision making for sanitation options be included here.

Look forward to hearing from Susana members.
Thanks
Sujaya Rathi
Principal Research Scientist
Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP)
Bangalore
INDIA