Comparative sanitation data from high-frequency phone surveys across 3 countries.

Area of Science:

• Urban planning
• Water and sanitation services
• Environmental science

Background:

• Limited access to safely managed sanitation affects over half the global urban population.
• Traditional sewer systems are costly and difficult to implement, leading to reliance on inadequate off-grid solutions.
• Container-based sanitation (CBS) presents an emerging, decentralized alternative for waste management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the access and utilization of container-based sanitation (CBS) across diverse user groups.
• To analyze the effectiveness of scaling, management, and regulation of off-grid sanitation systems.
• To contrast CBS with other sanitation methods through user-centered data collection.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a smartphone application for data collection, enabling citizen scientists to record weekly household data.
• Employed a micro-payment for micro-tasks approach to incentivize consistent participant engagement over 12 months.
• Conducted weekly surveys in over 300 households across informal settlements in Kenya, Peru, and South Africa, using Open Data Kit (ODK) tools.

Main Results:

• Smartphone-based data collection proved efficient, cost-effective, and flexible for gathering extensive geographical and socioeconomic data.
• Weekly resolution data captured nuanced human-environment interactions, daily life, and wellbeing.
• The study provided insights into user experiences with CBS, informing analyses on sanitation service delivery.

Conclusions:

• Container-based sanitation (CBS) is a viable off-grid solution addressing gaps in safely managed urban sanitation.
• Smartphone data collection methods can effectively capture detailed user data in resource-constrained settings.
• Findings support improved decision-making for scaling, managing, and regulating decentralized sanitation systems.