Capacity building and training approaches for water safety plans: A comprehensive literature review

Abstract

The World Health Organization has recommended Water Safety Plans (WSPs), a holistic risk assessment and risk management approach, for drinking-water suppliers across low-, middle- and high-income countries, since publishing its 2004 Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality. While rapid WSP adoption has occurred, capacity is still catching up to implementation needs. Many countries and regions lack case examples, legal requirements, and training resources for WSPs, corresponding to widespread capacity shortfall in the water supply sector. We undertook a comprehensive review of the literature on capacity building and training for WSPs, with the goal of providing recommendations for multiple stakeholder groups at the scales of individual utilities, national governments, and intermediate units of governance. We propose a WSP training taxonomy and discuss it in relation to the stages of learning (introduction, practice, and reinforcement); describe the importance of customizing training to the target group, local language and circumstances; highlight the relevance of auditing for evaluating change over time; and call for robust methods to monitor WSP capacity development.

Including water quality monitoring in rural water services: why safe water requires challenging the quantity versus quality dichotomy

“…External support is needed The dilemma analysis found that lack of empowerment creates barriers to improving water safety through monitoring. This is also reflected in the literature on water safety planning, which frequently highlights inadequate financing [34][35][36][37] and capacity 34,35,[38][39][40] as substantial barriers to successful implementation. In rural areas in particular, inadequate financing and capacity have meant that water safety planning efforts focus on the early stages of the approach (assembling a team, describing the water supply and identifying hazards, developing and implementing a plan for improvement) but neglect the latter stages of monitoring, verification, and iterative learning 33,39 , which are crucial to the effectiveness and sustainability of the approach 29,37 .…”

Status of risk-based approach and national framework for safe drinking water in small water supplies of the Nordic water sector

“…Worldwide experience, including high-income countries, has shown that key success factors for WSP implementation include regulatory requirements for a risk-based approach, access to tools such as manuals and guidance, training resources, cooperation across the sector as in national platforms, and context-specific evidence of the feasibility and benefits of WSP ( Schmiege et al, 2020 ; Kayser et al, 2019 ; Ferrero et al, 2019 ; Baum and Bartram, 2018 ; Amjad et al, 2016 ; Baum et al, 2016 , Gunnarsdottir et al, 2012a & 2012b ). These factors are especially important for small systems where there are typically fewer skills and resources available.…”

Status of Water Safety Plan Development and Implementation in Uganda

“…Similar to the Asia–Pacific study, we employed primary and secondary data sources to systematically assess the status of the 20 WSPs and identify the main enablers and barriers that explain these audit scores. Even though audit scores may not be directly correlated to WSP outcomes and impacts [11], audit is a summative evaluation step that enables understanding knowledge application and synthesis [30]. This study serves as a benchmark for the assessment of WSP development and implementation in Africa, especially for water schemes serving small and large urban centers.…”