scholarly journals Effective water safety management of piped water networks in low-income urban settlements

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Kayaga

Spiralling low-income settlements are a big challenge to urban water utilities of developing countries. To extend and maintain water services to these settlements, urban water utilities need to develop innovative solutions for overcoming various physical/technical, institutional, structural/legal and financial/economic constraints associated with these informal areas. This paper draws from documented pilot projects of implementing community-managed Water Safety Plans (WSPs) in various developing countries, and synthesises necessary ingredients for effective implementation of WSPs in low-income urban settlements. Urban water utilities need to partner with community members, but the former should keep a facilitating/overseeing role, given the overly technical nature of WSPs. The terms of the partnership should be mutually agreed and well documented; the utility should allow full participation of the relevant community members in the overall Operation and Maintenance (O&M) plan for the low-income settlement, in order to enhance community ownership of the water supply system, and continuously develop the capacity of relevant community members. The relevant community members should be facilitated, through participatory approaches, to develop bespoke community-based WSPs along with simple monitoring tools. Implementing community-managed WSPs will be easier and more effective if O&M systems and community management approaches are already institutionalised within the water utility.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Namrata Bhattacharya Mis

<p>Agenda 2030 goal 11 commits towards making disaster risk reduction an integral part of sustainable social and economic development. Flooding poses some of the most serious challenges in front of developing nations by hitting hardest to the most vulnerable. Focussing on the urban poor, frequently at highest risk are characterised by inadequate housing, lack of services and infrastructure with high population growth and spatial expansion in dense, lower quality urban structures. Use of big data from within these low-quality urban settlement areas can be a useful step forward in generating information to have a better understanding of their vulnerabilities. Big data for resilience is a recent field of research which offers tremendous potential for increasing disaster resilience especially in the context of social resilience. This research focusses to unleash the unrealised opportunities of big data through the differential social and economic frames that can contribute towards better-targeted information generation in disaster management. The scoping study aims to contribute to the understanding of the potential of big data in developing particularly in low-income countries to empower the vulnerable population against natural hazards such as floods. Recognising the potential of providing real-time and long-term information for emergency management in flood-affected large urban settlements this research concentrates on flood hazard and use of remotely sensed data (NASA, TRMM, LANDSAT) as the big data source for quick disaster response (and recovery) in targeted areas. The research question for the scoping study is: Can big data source provide real-time and long- term information to improve emergency disaster management in urban settlements against floods in developing countries?  Previous research has identified several potentials that big data has on faster response to the affected population but few attempts have been made to integrate the factors to develop an aggregated conceptual output . An international review of multi-discipline research, grey literature, grass-root projects, and emerging online social discourse will appraise the concepts and scope of big data to highlight the four objectives of the research and answer the specific questions around existing and future potentials of big data, operationalising and capacity building by agencies, risk associated and prospects of maximising impact. The research proposes a concept design for undertaking a thematic review of existing secondary data sources which will  be used to provide a holistic picture of how big data can support in resilience through technological change within the specific scope of social and environmental contexts of developing countries. The implications of the study lie in the system integration and understanding of the socio-economics, political, legal and ethical contexts essential for investment decision making for strategic impact and resilience-building in developing nations.</p>


2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 209-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.W.A. Franceys

The cost of new water connections for poor urban dwellers in middle and low-income economies, that is the official fees, costs of pipework and additional costs, is reported from a global survey of water utilities and a four country, two city questionnaire of newly connected households. The objective is to investigate whether directly ‘charging to enter the water shop’ is the most effective means of recovering costs for the water utility whilst ensuring maximum access to the urban poor who benefit most from convenient access to clean, affordable water.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Billies

The work of the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative (WWRC), a participatory action research (PAR) project that looks at how low income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming (LG-BTGNC) people survive and resist violence and discrimination in New York City, raises the question of what it means to make conscientization, or critical consciousness, a core feature of PAR. Guishard's (2009) reconceptualization of conscientization as “moments of consciousness” provides a new way of looking at what seemed to be missing from WWRC's process and analysis. According to Guishard, rather than a singular awakening, critical consciousness emerges continually through interactions with others and the social context. Analysis of the WWRC's process demonstrates that PAR researchers doing “PAR deep” (Fine, 2008)—research in which community members share in all aspects of design, method, analysis and product development—should have an agenda for developing critical consciousness, just as they would have agendas for participation, for action, and for research.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 469-476
Author(s):  
S.R.A. Soares ◽  
R.S. Bernardes

The sanitary problems promoted by the rapid urbanization process in developing cities are usually resulted from the absence of planning, high population concentration and inadequate water and wastewater infrastructure for low income people. Because the provision and planning of water supply and is a complex task, a modeling approach was used to enhance the understanding of the process and the aspects involved. In the development of a model, not only the technical aspects were taken into account, but other aspects related to the provision of drinking water and the water resources protection were also analyzed, such as institutional, financial, socioeconomic, environmental and public health. In the modeling process two different methods of conceptualization were used to describe the urban water flow through the water and wastewater systems linked to various aspects related to their implementation in large developing cities. The urban water systems of five large metropolitan areas in Brazil were also evaluated for the complete model. It is expected that the modeling approach developed in this paper consists of a valuable methodology for water supply and sanitation planning in Brazilian cities, and other developing cities with the same characteristics. The suggested conceptual model could, at least, provide more than a starting point for a useful urban water management tool.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-56
Author(s):  
Adelaide K. Sandler ◽  
Mary E. Hylton ◽  
Jason Ostrander ◽  
Tanya R. Smith

Disparities in voter turnout have increased significantly over the past four decades. Members of historically oppressed groups, those who are low-income, and or who have lower levels of education vote at significantly lower rates than white, wealthy and or more educated community members. These disparities correlate directly to political power and the eventual allocation of resources by elected officials. Therefore, eliminating these disparities through targeted voter engagement with client groups is particularly important for the profession of social work. This article describes the conceptualization of voter engagement as a three-legged stool, consisting of voter registration, regular voting, and basing voting decisions on self-interest.Without attention to all three legs, the potential for generating political power collapses, resulting in minimal influence on elected officials.


Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 520
Author(s):  
Roberto Cárcamo-Calvo ◽  
Carlos Muñoz ◽  
Javier Buesa ◽  
Jesús Rodríguez-Díaz ◽  
Roberto Gozalbo-Rovira

Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe acute childhood gastroenteritis, responsible for more than 128,500 deaths per year, mainly in low-income countries. Although the mortality rate has dropped significantly since the introduction of the first vaccines around 2006, an estimated 83,158 deaths are still preventable. The two main vaccines currently deployed, Rotarix and RotaTeq, both live oral vaccines, have been shown to be less effective in developing countries. In addition, they have been associated with a slight risk of intussusception, and the need for cold chain maintenance limits the accessibility of these vaccines to certain areas, leaving 65% of children worldwide unvaccinated and therefore unprotected. Against this backdrop, here we review the main vaccines under development and the state of the art on potential alternatives.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document