To meet the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 2030) without leaving vulnerable people such as the refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) behind, it is important to upgrade drainage systems across refugee and IDP camps using innovative technologies such as sustainable drainage systems (SuDS). Retrofitting the existing surface water drainage systems using SuDS technologies can improve the living conditions of the refugees by addressing environmental challenges such as flooding, erosion and outbreak of water-related diseases across the camps. In this paper, evaluation of pollutant removal and hydraulic performance of laboratory experimental set-up of SuDS technologies mimicking stormwater management conditions for African IDP and refugee camps is presented. Two rigs of engineered wetlands and two rigs of filter drains (FDs) constructed using locally sourced low-cost sustainable materials were evaluated for stormwater attenuation and pollutants removal efficacies. The results showed that both the engineered wetland systems and FDs for simulated refugee camp conditions showed a significant reduction in the organic loading levels for chemical oxygen demand, biochemical/biological oxygen demand and turbidity and nutrients present in the stormwater. In addition, the engineered wetlands and FDs are effective in attenuating significant proportion of precipitation.
Since refugee camps are meant to be temporary and setting them up usually require urgency, little attention has been given to provision of surface water drainage and to a lesser extent wastewater management. As the population of refugees in these camps continues to grow, the effectiveness of drainage infrastructure continues to diminish. In addition, availability of sufficient safe drinking water and wastewater management have become difficult in the refugee camps across the world. The present situation in refugee camps across the world, such as flooding and outbreak of water-related diseases in South Sudan refugee camps, has made the need for sustainable approach to solving the problems to be very urgent. One sustainable way of solving the problems of flooding and outbreak of diseases in refugee camps is to provide effective drainage and wastewater infrastructure that ensures all the wastewater are properly collected, treated and reused for various purposes such as agriculture, drinking, laundry and other relevant uses. This paper therefore presents the current state of drainage and wastewater management in two refugee camps and propose low-cost technologies for stormwater management, wastewater collection, treatment and potential reuse, suitable for these refugee camps.
The research evaluated the suitability of a simplified decentralised surface water drainage model for sustainable management of storm-water in refugee camps at sub-catchment scales.
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