This tutorial review synthesizes literature on sustainability analyses to introduce quantitative sustainable design (QSD) for technology research, development, and deployment.

The pursuit of sustainability has catalyzed broad investment in the research, development, and deployment (RD&D) of innovative water, sanitation, and resource recovery technologies, yet the lack of transparent and agile methodologies to navigate the expansive landscape of technology development pathways remains a critical challenge. This challenge is further complicated by the higher levels of uncertainty that are intrinsic to early-stage technologies. In this work, we review and synthesize published literature on the sustainability analyses of water and related technologies to present Quantitative Sustainable Design (QSD) – a methodology to expedite and support technology RD&D. With a shared lexicon and a structured approach, QSD facilitates interdisciplinary communication and research consistency. In introducing QSD, we review existing studies to highlight best practices and discuss them in the context of the specific steps of QSD, which include defining the problem space, establishing simulation algorithms, and characterizing system sustainability across economic, environmental, human health, and social dimensions. Next, we summarize tools for QSD execution and provide recommendations to account for uncertainty in this process. We further discuss applications of QSD in the fields of water/wastewater and beyond (e.g., renewable fuels, circular economy) in combination with uncertainty, sensitivity, and scenario analyses to generate the desired types of insight. Finally, we identify future research needs for sustainability analyses to advance technology RD&D. Ultimately, QSD can be used to elucidate the complex and intertwined connections among design decisions, technology characteristics, contextual factors, and sustainability indicators, thereby supporting transparent, consistent, and agile RD&D.

Flooding disasters pose a threat to sanitation services and can result in loss of access that exacerbates challenges to achieving universal access. To maintain and even improve access to sanitation...

Despite the existence of numerous sanitation assessment frameworks, it remains unclear how to provide and measure sustainable access to sanitation. A systematic literature review was conducted to evaluate and collate sanitation criteria (i.e., indicators) for evaluating the sustainability or resilience of sanitation systems. The identified indicators represented 30 evaluation themes that included triple bottom line sustainability and technical and resilience considerations, but none of the individual articles had included all themes. In particular, resilience themes were not commonly integrated with other themes. Further, many indicators were not measurable, even though most literature articles (85%) applied their indicators; over a third of the identified indicators had vague or absent metrics. These findings highlight several future research needs, such as developing validation processes to help ensure a set of indicators is sufficiently measuring progress toward or away from sanitation sustainability; expanding guidance on, and options for, data collection and analysis procedures, especially for resilience; and supporting future indicator selection processes, for which a database of existing sanitation criteria was created. These all provide opportunities for improving the measurement of environmental and human well-being associated with sanitation access.