Department Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development

Mission and Vision of Sandec

To create a world where everyone has equitable access to safe, resilient, and sustainable sanitation, water, and solid waste services facilitated through innovation, research, and global collaboration that drives progress towards protecting human and environmental health. Sandec advances solution-oriented multidisciplinary research, global partnerships, and open knowledge sharing/exchange. Our work informs policy, strengthens practice, and supports stakeholders to achieve lasting impact in development and fragile contexts. We do this by:

  • Collaborating globally with universities, research institutions, NGOs, governmental bodies, humanitarian agencies and development organisations
  • Fostering international transdisciplinary partnerships with the public and private sectors to develop and test applied research at household, community, city-wide, national and regional scales
  • Offering capacity development, education and training by providing knowledge support, curricula development, workshops, courses and blended learning programmes
  • Communicating, publishing and disseminating our research, knowledge and training tools and making them openly accessible

Our seven strategic research themes are:

Strategic Environmental Sanitation Planning
Our aim is to develop sanitation strategies and concepts that are socially, culturally and technically appropriate in urban and peri-urban settings.

Solid Waste Management
We focus on innovative solutions for the appropriate treatment of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste.

Management of Excreta, Wastewater and Sludge
We address three main challenges in faecal sludge mangement: optimisation of treatment technologies, innovation in resource recovery, and methods for sustainable system level implementation.

Water Supply and Treatment
We develop sustainable and cost-efficient approaches for measuring and improving drinking water quality.

Water Safety Management
We develop and evaluate appropriate solutions that strengthen access to and enhance the consumption of safe drinking water in vulnerable households in low income countries.

Organizations & Climate
The Organizations & Climate Group researches the dynamic capabilities water and sanitation organizations need to adapt their strategies and manage new interventions in response to climate change impacts.

Public Health, Infrastructure and Climate
We conduct operational research into the challenges of improving water supply and sanitation infrastructure in low-resource and crisis-affected settings. Our goal is to support the delivery of safe, climate-resilient services that prevent infectious diseases and contribute to better public health outcomes.