An assessment of the relative significance of risks from distal and proximal faecal hazards to the health of urban populations

Sanitation interventions do not reliably improve public health. Little work has been done to track faecal contamination from its source (a failure in the sanitation chain) to population exposure points. Exposure may arise from sources locally or remote from the point of exposure. Improving understanding of the nature of faecal flows in the urban space could help prioritise the most effective urban sanitation interventions.
The project will be carried out by conducting literature review and analysis of the current knowledge. Then Sanipath-type sampling and data gathering will be done for a variety of seminal households in the Barapullah basin in Delhi, India. From these results the sources of the faecal contamination will be traced using a variety of methods, such as following back the origins of the faeces used to fertilise the soil where the fresh produce is grown, and examining the upstream communities contributing to the contamination in the open drains. This will lead to the mapping of faecal catchments for the seminal households, comparison of how these vary between communities, and eventually the upscaling of this to understand the faecal contamination contributions to the communities.
This research will answer important questions on the way that faecal contamination moves around the urban environment which will enable more effective interventions to protect the health of communities. These pathways include the inappropriate disposal and reuse of faecal sludge and waste water. As is shown in the F-diagram, clean water, sanitation and hand washing should block the transmission of faecal pathogens, but in reality, even if a community has these interventions the pathogens can still arrive from other areas of the city, and cause high levels of contamination that inevitably transmits disease.
Exploration of the complex source-pathway-exposures linkages in the urban environment would enable faecal hazards to be mapped spatially, which would allow evidence-based determination of the most effective interventions to improve health.

Water-WISER will train a cohort of 50 British research engineers and scientists and equip them to work in challenging environments both in the low-income settings of rapidly growing poor cities and in the changing urban environment of the UK, Europe and other regions with a historic endowment of aging infrastructure. The vision is for a generation of engineers with the skills to deliver the trans-disciplinary innovations needed to ensure that future water, waste and sanitation infrastructure is resilient to the stresses posed by rapid urbanisation, global climate change and increasingly extreme natural and man-made disasters. Our alumni will address the urgent need to re-imagine urban spaces as net contributors to ecological and environmental well-being rather than being net users of vital resources such as energy, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. These new leaders will be an essential resource if the UK is to deliver on its commitment to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 6 which calls for universal access to safely managed water and sanitation services, within planetary and local ecological boundaries. This next generation of research engineers will enable UK-based engineering consultancies, manufacturers, and utility companies to grow their share of the expanding global market for water and waste services, for example; in the water services industry from 3% to 10% (an increase of £33 billion per annum) by 2030, and attract significant inward investment.
The research which Water-WISER cohorts enable will form the basis of new innovations in the design and delivery of resilient infrastructure and services. Innovations developed by Water-WISER graduates will inform how growing cities are designed and built in the global south and will be used to inform the re-engineering and replacement of the aging infrastructure on which the UK's water and waste services are currently reliant. Our alumni will form the new generation of leaders who will play a central role in securing a larger share of the international water and waste management consultancy market to UK consultancies. The network of expertise and skills created by Water-WISER will enhance potential for collaborations between major UK players (for example strengthening links between UK consultancy, the Department for International Development, and leading UK water agencies such as WaterAid and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) and between UK companies and partners in the global south including international investors such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Graduates of Water-WISER will enter industry, academia and development agencies having spent a substantial period (minimum of six months) embedded in an industry or development partner organisation delivering their field-based research. Water-WISER students will thus gain a unique combination of trans-disciplinary training, field experience and cohort networking; they are destined for leadership roles in UK and international engineering and development consultancies, academia, international development banks, international agencies such as the United Nations and international non-governmental organisations.