Priority Addressment Protocol: Understanding the Ability and Potential of Sanitation Systems to Address Priorities

Abstract

Sanitation acceptance is unlikely if user priorities are not addressed. However, sanitation systems 13 are commonly implemented, especially in resource-limited communities, without incorporating 14 local context. Understanding sanitation systems' abilities to address different priorities will further 15 inform technology selection processes. Therefore, a protocol was created to identify priorities and measure how well sanitation systems address them, based upon their importance to a community. This protocol was applied to 20 community-based sanitation systems in India. Overall, 52 sanitation and 40 community priorities were identified; most, along with their relative importance, were case-specific and not yet identified in literature. Existing sanitation systems poorly addressed priorities. Nonfunctional systems addressed the fewest, but, if use and maintenance were improved, they had the potential to address priorities almost as well as functional systems.Resource recovery systems addressed the most priorities, but there was usually minimal benefit to adding all three resources to an existing system; biogas and water had greater potential to address more priorities than compost. This priority addressment protocol can help identify the most appropriate technologies and strategies to improve technology development and success. 26

The use of qualitative comparative analysis to identify pathways to successful and failed sanitation systems

“…The sanitation system is an appropriate technology that therefore addresses a majority of the community's (most important) sanitation priorities; quantified using the priority addressment protocol (Davis et al, 2019). Black, 1998;Davis et al, 2019;Hacker and Kaminsky, 2017;Murphy et al, 2009;Palaniappan et al, 2008;Seymour, 2014; Case Knowledge…”

“…The remaining two of the nine causal conditions were calibrated directly (i.e., 211 set membership is defined by continuously normalizing raw quantitative data within anchor points 212 (0, 0.5, 1) (Ragin, 2008)). For Addressed Sanitation Priorities, raw data for each case was a 213 quantitative priority addressment score, which reflects the extent to which priorities were 214 addressed based on importance (i.e., how appropriate the technology was to the local context) 215 (Davis et al, 2019) (SI Figure S1). For Sufficient O&M Funds, raw data for each case was the 216 amount of available funds as a percentage of monthly O&M costs (SI Figure S2).…”

“…Each case's sanitation system was classified as being either successful or failed. Success was defined as the presence of three criteria (Davis et al, 2019(Davis et al, , 2018: (1) the system is used by at least 75% of the community; (2) at least 90% of maintenance tasks are performed correctly and on time; and (3) the system complies with local regulations for pH, COD, and BOD. Cases were classified as failed if they did not meet at least one of the success criteria.…”

“…The causal conditions in the pathways are not chronological or linear; causal conditions are presented based on necessity scores, with the exception of Government Barriers in failure pathways 3 and 4, which ispresented first to differentiate these two pathways. Case numbering matches cases fromDavis et al, 2019Davis et al, , 2018…”

System Approaches to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene: A Systematic Literature Review

“…While applying this framework may produce rich insights into a particular context, the approach overall may be difficult to replicate due to resource needs that include external, highly skilled WASH professionals. Although we did not conduct a direct assessment of the replicability or scalability of each approach, we likely would have been hindered in doing so, since few studies, with some noted exceptions [37,70,71], reported on the resources that are required to implement the proposed approach. In order to better evaluate the practicality of these approaches, more reporting is needed on the resources required for studies which are applied across multiple contexts.…”