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Emergencies and humanitarian crises: Making sanitation decisions

September 15, 2021 | Paul Donahue

Making decisions about what sanitation infrastructure to implement in emergency and humanitarian crises is challenging. Research on how to support this decision-making has led to the online platform: emersan-compendium.org.

How can decisions about sanitation in emergency and humanitarian crisis situations be made? Based on the Compendium of Sanitation Technologies in Emergencies, Eawag-Sandec, SuSanA and the Global WASH Cluster, under the leadership of the German WASH Network, have developed the online platform: emersan-compendium.org. This online compendium is a systematic compilation of all relevant emergency sanitation technologies. By selecting key decision criteria dealing with the type of emergency phase, the local context, and input and output products, the online tool identifies appropriate technology combinations appropriate for the context. And it provides information about configuring the entire sanitation service chain: from the toilet via collection, transport, treatment to safe disposal and reuse. Besides English, this eCompendium is also available in French and will soon be in Arabic.

An article about the eCompendium is just one of many articles that can be found in this year's Sandec News. Sandec News highlights the current research on water, sanitation and solid waste of the Department of Water, Sanitation and Solid Waste for Development (Sandec), as well as information on publications in the sector, new MOOC productions and recently produced videos. The magazine has just been published and is available online at: www.sandec.ch.

Cover picture: Eawag, Christopher Friedrich