Understanding the costs of urban sanitation: towards a standard costing model

Abstract

There is a dearth of reliable cost data for urban sanitation. In the absence of high-quality global data, the full cost of sustainable implementation of urban sanitation remains uncertain. This paper proposes an approach for developing bespoke parametric cost estimation models for easy and reliable estimation of the costs of alternative sanitation technologies in a range of geographical contexts. A key requirement for the development of these models is the establishment of a large database of empirical information on the current costs of sanitation systems. Such a database does not currently exist. Two foundational tools are proposed. Firstly, a standard metric for reporting the costs of urban sanitation systems, total annualised cost per household. Secondly, a standardised approach to the collection of empirical cost data, the Novel Ball-Park Reporting Approach (NBPRA). Data from the NBPRA are presented for 87 individual sanitation components from 25 cities in 10 countries. Broad cost ranges for different archetypal systems have been estimated; these currently have high levels of uncertainty. Further work is proposed to collect additional data, build up the global database, and develop parametric cost estimation models with higher reliability.

Water security in sub‐Saharan Africa: Understanding the status of sustainable development goal 6

“…These factors contribute to overwhelm the capacity of governments to respond to increasing water demand in urban areas (Dos Santos et al, 2017). Development of sanitation services in SSA is also constrained by a lack of reliable and comparable benchmark estimates of the unit costs of sanitation infrastructure which is currently characterized by ambiguity concerning costing standards (Sainati et al, 2020). Access to water supply in some communities is also constrained by the dissonance between statutory and customary institutions that regulate access to water (Gondo & Kolawole, 2020).…”

An evaluation of different provision strategies for scaled-up container-based sanitation

“…Any installation is likely to be driven by land availability rather than resultant routing efficienciesas discussed in Bosompem et al (2016) for the installation of transfer stations in Kumasi. These various other evaluation metrics (along with full cost-benefit analyses) is an area for further work (Russel et al 2019), possibly using costing data from the 'Climate and Costs in Urban Sanitation' project (Sainati et al 2020).…”

Does “Low Cost” Urban Sanitation Exist? Lessons from a Global Data Set

“…The cost of sanitation has been theoretically linked to a number of technical considerations such as population density, size, and degree of centralization. ,, Here, we examine the evidence for other effects in determining the overall cost liabilities for urban sanitation.…”

“…By contrast, the CACTUS project has developed a method to collect reliable comparable cost data for sanitation systems over different years and in different countries. 10 The project has already collected comparable and reliable real cost data in 25 cities in 10 countries across the world as of June 2023. 11 In this paper, we demonstrate the value of being able to sum the full costs of sanitation including collection, transport, and treatment and to examine these for the type of mixed sewer/onsite containment systems which are prevalent in African cities.…”