This year marks the bicentenary of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and the 50th anniversary of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO). The ICE and the WFEO will play lead roles in the First Global Engineering Congress this October in London, the main task of which will be to discuss how to deliver the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2018). SDG 6 is to ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation’ and Dr GR Gupta, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director (Programmes) states that ‘if we do not reach Goal 6, the other goals and targets will not be reached’ (UNICEF, 2015).
Progress on achieving SDG 6 is reviewed in UN (2017) where it states that ‘Achieving universal access to basic sanitation and ending the unsafe practice of open defecation will require substantial acceleration of progress in rural areas of Central and Southern Asia, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa’. It is also stated that ‘Effective water and sanitation management relies on the participation of a range of stakeholders, including local communities.’ The need to ensure sustained improvement in both rural and urban sanitation in low and middle-income countries requires a combination of health awareness-building at the local level, commitment among communities, service-providers, planning authorities, regional and national government. It also requires maximum use of available technology for cost-effective planning and application. Nevertheless, Jones et al. (2012) conclude that the greatest challenges for safe sanitation in low-income countries are from institutional and social barriers to change.
Three papers in this issue make important contributions in this field. The first is by Younger et al. (2018) who describe an integrated programme of sustainable humanitarian engineering in east Bali aimed at improved rural health and livelihood through a range of interventions. The ‘abject poverty’ of the 15,000-strong community was due in part to the eruption of Mount Agung which deposited a blanket of pyroclastic material onto an already fragile landscape. Work commenced in 1998 and was focused in six main areas: education; malnutrition; maternal and child healthcare; environmental restoration; clean water and sanitation. Intervention priorities were identified by the communities themselves and maximum use was made of local materials and human capital through training and participation. Toilet and bathroom blocks were constructed by each family, with septic tanks and soakaways, and the cost of providing ‘good and safe sanitation, improved hygiene and health, especially for infants and children’ amounted to US$0.013 (slightly more than a cent) per person per day over a ten-year period. ‘Ownership’ and ‘self-reliance’ are key components of community-based projects such as this, and the paper demonstrates how these goals were central to the design of the work from the outset.
The second paper, by Sohail et al. (2018), draws attention to the lack of safe sanitation in many parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, with approximately 840 million people in these regions practicing open defecation. They note that the costs associated with poor health arising from inadequate sanitary provision can amount to 2.5% of annual GDP. The paper focuses on the management, treatment and recycling of human faecal sludge (HFS) and discusses the various technological, economic, environmental and human health challenges in doing so. The use of pit latrines and septic tanks, in densely populated areas especially, can be problematic logistically and, depending on the method of emptying deployed, can pose health concerns of its own. Thermal, biochemical, mechanical and thermochemical techniques of processing HFS and disposing of sterilised products are discussed. Many of these techniques require high energy, are expensive and time consuming, may emit greenhouse gases and malodours and may not guarantee pathogenic inactivation in any case. The potential benefits offered by a specially-designed hydrothermal carbonisation toilet (HCT) are discussed that creates biological charcoal from human waste, removes pathogens and returns water for potential reuse. The authors stress the importance of combining appropriate technology with the commitment of the private sector, national governments and international bodies in order to achieve sustainable solutions. Further discussion on the potential role of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the water and sanitation sector can also be found, for example, in Sohail and Cavill (2009). Readers may also be interested in the discussion provided by Sanders (2015), for example, on the use of simple technology to facilitate the reuse of human waste as fertilizer in Haiti.
Communities must be fully engaged and made aware of the health benefits associated with the adoption of new technologies and approaches to healthcare and sanitation, as illustrated in the paper by Younger et al. (2018) and discussed in Vernon and Bongartz (2016), for example. Furthermore, water-intensive systems may not be sustainable in all areas given the challenges of water scarcity, as emphatically demonstrated in Cape Town this year.
Kafil and Albaji (2018) contribute the third paper on this theme by describing a study carried out to optimise the location of sewage treatment facilities in Iran. The emphasis is on the use of aerobic biological decomposition in stabilisation ponds to service the wastewater treatment needs of small to medium-sized communities where there is sufficient space for construction. In total, eight technical, socio-economic and environmental criteria were assessed, using Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA). Maps showing the distribution of each criterion were analysed using a Geographical Information System (GIS), thus allowing rapid site selection.
The use of GIS also formed the central component of the work described by Alkan and Surmeneli (2018) in their paper, although the subject matter is entirely different. These authors have developed a spatial database in GIS for tracking the locations and types of advertisement for tax revenue management purposes in Istanbul. The database also contains provision for a photographic record of all billboards, screens and other advertising signage, thus allowing the aesthetics of the urban environment to be monitored and regulated. The names, addresses and tax payment status of all advertisers are also recorded in the database and can be accessed without the need to run the GIS software.
Capacity building is a fundamental pillar of all sustainable development programmes. It formed important elements of the work described by Younger et al. (2018) and is central to achieving the take-up of effective sanitation technology, such as that described by Sohail et al. (2018). The role of capacity building as a factor in the participation of local construction firms in infrastructure development projects in Mauritius is assessed by Appasamy and Paul (2018). Among the firms interviewed, an emphasis on cutting costs and increasing profits was considered to be more important than capacity building. There was an apparent general lack of awareness of the importance of training and technological development. A lack of long-term vision and planning was also a constraint, and not only among local firms but in Government too. The authors recommend the formation of an independent executive agency, comprising representatives from institutions, industry and the education sector to help formulate a long-term plan to help reduce uncertainty and promote workforce training and capacity building in general.
The final paper in this Issue is that of Zhang et al. (2018). Congestion has become a major issue in almost all cities worldwide and is prevalent in all urban areas with over 1 million inhabitants (Rodrigue, 2017). Zhang et al. model the flow of traffic at intersections, focusing on the efficiency of the merging lane for right-turning vehicles in right-hand traffic systems, such as is operated in China. They conclude that ‘the research can provide a theoretical basis for the evaluation of the operational efficiency of merging areas and the appropriate establishment and provision of additional lanes’.
