The top priorities for urban water sustainability include the provision of safe drinking water, wastewater handling for public health, and protection against flooding. However, rapidly aging infrastructure, population growth, and increasing urbanization call into question current urban water management strategies, especially in the fast-growing urban areas in Asia and Africa. We review innovative approaches in urban water management with the potential to provide locally adapted, resource-efficient alternative solutions. Promising examples include new concepts for stormwater drainage, increased water productivity, distributed or on-site treatment of wastewater, source separation of human waste, and institutional and organizational reforms. We conclude that there is an urgent need for major transdisciplinary efforts in research, policy, and practice to develop alternatives with implications for cities and aquatic ecosystems alike.
Access to improved sanitation is a key preventive measure against sanitary-related gastro-enteric diseases such as diarrhoea. We assessed the access to sanitation facilities and users' satisfaction in 50 randomly selected slums of Kampala through a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2010. A total of 1500 household respondents were interviewed. Sixty-eight per cent of the respondents used shared toilets, 20% private, 11% public toilets and less than 1% reported using flying toilets or practising open defecation. More than half of the respondents (51.7%) were not satisfied with their sanitation facilities. Determinants for satisfaction with the facilities used included the nature and type of toilet facilities used, their cleanliness, and the number of families sharing them. The study findings showed that slum dwellers had high access to sanitation facilities. However, most of them were shared and majority of the respondents were not satisfied with their facilities, primarily due to cleanliness and over demand.
A research agenda for the future of urban water management: exploring the potential of non-grid, small-grid, and hybrid solutions. Environmental Science and Technology.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.