Sanitation Sustainability Index: A Pilot Approach to Develop a Community-Based Indicator for Evaluating Sustainability of Sanitation Systems

Abstract

Evaluating the sustainability of sanitation systems is essential in achieving the sixth sustainable development goal. However, there are only limited number of available evaluation indexes, which are utilized to macroscopically determine a community’s sanitation coverage. Consequently, an index is required, which can evaluate different sanitation options for a specific community. In this paper, the sanitation sustainability index (SSI) is suggested as an indicator for evaluating the sustainability of sanitation systems. The SSI has sub-indexes that consider the technical, social, and economic aspects of the sanitation system, and all the variables are dimensionless and heavily dependent on the current state of the community where the sanitation system is going to be implemented. The applicability of the SSI was demonstrated by evaluating the implementation of two onsite sanitation systems, including one septic tank system and one resource-oriented sanitation (ROS) system in South Korea. A sensitivity analysis defined the variables that have significant impact, and the statistical distribution of the SSI for both systems was forecasted. The results showed that for South Korea, which has a profound history of utilizing human waste as fertilizer, utilizing the resource-oriented sanitation system is more sustainable, although it has a lower social sub-index score compared to the septic tank system.

Green Infrastructure for Sanitation in Settlements in the Global South: A Narrative Review of Socio-Technical Systems

“…GI also facilitates the monitoring and evaluation of the sanitation system to determine its sustainability, which is essential to achieve UN SDG6 [17,18]. Different sustainability indices have been developed for this purpose, varying in intent, focus, scale and detail.…”

“…These two performance indices can guide future progress towards sustainability. In contrast, sanitation sustainability indices can use broader sets of descriptors or subindices to characterise existing or potential systems to be implemented in cities or local communities [17,18]. The Water and Sanitation Sustainability Index (WASSI) [17] is based on a five-dimensional sustainability concept related to place, permanence and persons, and uses nine descriptors and 15 indicators, including issues of governance and customer satisfaction.…”

“…Another sanitation sustainability index was developed to complement the WASH Performance Index by quantifying technical, social and economic aspects of a local community. Important in this index are the acceptability and public health indicators [18]. Such sanitation sustainability indices can guide decision-making in the selection, design and implementation of a sanitation system most suitable, and hence most likely to be sustainable, in a particular context.…”

Sanitation Infrastructure at the Systemic Edge: Segregated Roma Settlements and Multiple Health Risks in Slovakia

“…From originally very technical perspectives focusing on environmental-technical systems, production costs and volumes, there is an increasing focus on also including into the indexes social aspects, including access to the resources, affordability and community management of the resources. From this perspective we find an inspiring need to study Roma communities’ SSI (sanitation sustainability index) [ 28 ] and especially the WASSI (Water and Sanitation Sustainability Index) [ 29 ]. WASSI operates with descriptors of availability, infrastructure, equity, access, planning, participation, use, impact and satisfaction.…”

Adapting Santiago Method to Determine Appropriate and Resource Efficient Sanitation Systems for an Urban Settlement in Lima Peru

“…In steps ( 4) and ( 5) different multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods can be used to identify and negotiate trade-offs and to balance opposing interests. Examples of evaluation methods include the CLUES Tool D17.1 [12] or SSI [13] or WASSI [14]. However, any decision is only as good as the options presented.…”