Lessons from co-designing a resource-recovery game for collaborative urban sanitation planning

The aim of this study is to describe the development of an innovative planning tool to promote the knowledge and collaboration needed to overcome challenges in the sanitation sector. A serious game was designed to share knowledge about resource recovery and support attitude-change and collaboration between stakeholders. This study documents the co-design process of game development from conception based on a set of specifications the game should achieve, through iterative testing with relevant stakeholders as players. The resulting prototype of the game showed that it was not possible to include all the original desired specifications in the final game. Stakeholders found that the game was engaging, stimulated creativity and achieved its goal

Assessing the potential to use serious gaming in planning processes for sanitation designed for resource recovery

There is an urgent need for innovations in the sanitation sector to minimize environmental impacts and maximize resource recovery. Uptake of innovations may require changes in established technical practices, organisational norms and/or individual behaviours. Achieving change in any of these areas requires influencing cognitive, normative and relational learning processes. Serious games have been identified a potential tool for planners and environmental managers to influence such learning processes. This study designed the serious game RECLAIM to share knowledge about resource recovery from sanitation and to support attitude-change and collaboration between players. A structured framework was applied to assess if the game: 1) increased understanding of resource recovery (cognitive learning), 2) changed worldviews (normative learning), 3) led to more collaboration (relational learning), and 4) was a positive experience. Proof-of-concept testing of the game in Uganda found that it was positively received. The game provided cognitive learning on environmental and health impacts, resource recovery, and sanitation in general. Players gained an appreciation of the need for collaboration and it was deemed to have the potential to influence worldviews of a larger stakeholder group. Future recommendations include embedding the game in planning processes, including several gaming sessions that would strengthen cognition learning and the potential for changing practices

Inclusive Higher Education and Employment: A Secondary Analysis of Program Components

Through secondary analyses of quantitative data obtained from the Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities (TPSID) National Coordinating Center database from the first cohort (2010-2015) of model demonstration sites in Florida, this study examined components of the postsecondary education programs for students with intellectual disabilities that are correlated with employment upon program exit. This study adds to the emergent knowledge base on inclusive higher education by identifying the programmatic components of the postsecondary education programs for students with intellectual disability most correlated with successful transition from college to employment. This information can be used to inform program development and refinement to foster employment upon exit, a worthy outcome that leads to greater quality of life. The academic access program component of inclusive coursework was found to have the strongest correlation with the post-school outcome of paid, competitive employment upon exit. This program component aligns with the established predictors of post-school success for students with disabilities (Mazzotti et al., 2016) and employment for people with intellectual disabilities (Southward & Kyzar, 2017). Areas of agreement are discussed as well as implications for a number of stakeholders

Where do Kampala’s poor “go”? - Urban sanitation conditions in Kampala’s low-income areas

Results of a representative survey conducted with 1’500 poor households in Uganda’s capital during November 2010 show that the majority of Kampala’s urban poor have access to on-site sanitation facilities. Despite the widespread accessibility to sanitation, the conditions of many facilities are unsatisfactory due to the generally large number of users per stance. This leads to low hygienic standards and waiting times for toilet users. As a result, “flying toilets” is (at least occasionally) still a common practice among the urban poor, and many toilets are abandoned after a relatively short time - thus questioning the true level of sanitation access in Kampala’s low-income areas. Household investment in good-quality on-site facilities is discouraged by the lack of property rights and high prices, often exceeding the average annual per capita income in Kampala’s poor settlements

Application of black soldier fly larvae in decentralized treatment of faecal sludge from pit latrines in informal settlements in Kampala city

Introduction: Faecal sludge management (FSM) in urban areas of low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) is not properly implemented due to inaccessibility of sanitation facilities and high faecal sludge (FS) emptying costs, amongst others. Unlike in solid waste and fresh human excreta, use of black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) in treatment of FS from pit latrines - which are the most common sanitation facilities in urban areas of LMICs - has not yet been explored. Moreover, the optimal conditions for efficient FS degradation, such as moisture content, feeding rate and larval density are not yet well known. Against this backdrop, the overarching aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of BSFL in treating FS under different conditions of moisture content, feeding rate and larval density. Also, the quality of residue left after treatment was assessed.Methods: FS samples were collected from lined and unlined pit latrines in Bwaise I parish in Kampala, Uganda and experiments were set up to feed 10-day old larvae.Results and Discussion: The optimum feeding rate, larval density and moisture content were found to be 50 mg/larvae/day, 1.33 larvae/cm2 and 60%, respectively. The reduction efficiency at optimum conditions were 72% and 66% for FS from lined and unlined pit latrines, respectively. It was further noted that BSFL can feed on FS from pit latrines without dewatering it, hence there is no need for a dewatering unit. The properties of the residue left after treatment were within the allowable limit for use as compost except for helminth egg concentration. Thus, in informal urban settlements, BSFL can be applied for effective treatment of FS from pit latrines while generating good quality residue thereby providing an additional value chain in FSM

When is shared sanitation improved sanitation? - The correlation between number of users and toilet hygiene

The international debate on the question of whether shared and/or public sanitation facilities should be considered improved is still open. The concern is that a shared sanitation facility cannot be maintained in hygienic conditions when used by too many people. The analysis of 1’500 randomly selected toilets in the urban slums of Kampala showed that only 22 percent of households have access to private sanitation facilities; the remaining 78 percent share their toilet with an average of 6 households. There is a clear and strong correlation between number of users and the condition and cleanliness of a toilet stance. Less than 20 percent of private toilets are dirty, whereas 60 percent of sanitation facilities are dirty if they are shared by more than 10 households. This policy brief asserts that toilet facilities shared by not more than four households can be considered “acceptable” or improved, with “only” about 25 percent classified as dirty by an objective evaluation

Infrastructure investments and operating costs for fecal sludge and sewage treatment systems in Kampala, Uganda

Like many low-income countries, Uganda is struggling to provide sanitation to its inhabitants. Meeting the Sustainable Development Goal related to sanitation (SDG6) will require major investments in sanitation. This study uses the concept of service regimes to analyze existing sanitation infrastructure and services and their respective costs. The service regimes investigated are the sewage regime and the fecal sludge (FS) regime. The results show that approximately 56% of the fecal flow in Kampala is estimated as ‘safely managed’. The results also show that the annual per capita costs for the sewage regime (USD 186) are more than 13-fold those for the FS regime (USD 14). Additionally, there are large differences in subsidies between the regimes. When allocating public funds, decision-makers are advised to consider (i) number of customers within regimes, (ii) total capital and operating costs of services, (iii) cost allocation between stakeholders, and (iv) infrastructure performance

Long-term variations of water quality in the Inner Murchison Bay, Lake Victoria

The water quality in the Inner Murchison Bay (IMB) located in Uganda on the northern shores of Lake Victoria is affected by a complex mixture of processes and driving factors including pollution, river inflows, lake water levels, wetland management and flora and fauna populations. This study attempts to explain long-term variations of the IMB water quality and to provide a plausible water quality model. Because intermittent monitoring around the Bay hinders accurate determination of pollution, concentrations at the extreme northern shores (hotspots) are considered indicative of the pollutant loading into the bay. Delft3D-Flow was applied to study the Bay hydrodynamics and coupled with the Delwaq module to investigate water quality processes related to oxygen: organic and nutrient components i.e. dissolved oxygen (DO), biological oxygen demand (BOD) and ammonium (NH4+). It is found that the IMB water quality deteriorated exponentially in the period 2001–2014 due to increased pollution and the high residence time of water. The worst water quality was in 2010 when diffuse pollution intensified due to the lining of more drainage channels within Kampala City in addition to the declining wetland effect. The water quality towards the Outer Murchison Bay (OMB) deteriorated over time with dilution accounting for 40–60% of pollutant reduction. Although the effect of lake level variations is negligible compared to pollution into the IMB, increased lake levels after 2011 improved DO levels and mixing and hence BOD levels in the IMB.status: publishe

Potential impacts of climate change on precipitation over Lake Victoria, East Africa, in the 21st Century

Precipitation over Lake Victoria in East Africa greatly influences its water balance. Over 30 million people rely on Lake Victoria for food, potable water, hydropower and transport. Projecting precipitation changes over the lake is vital in dealing with climate change impacts. The past and future precipitation over the lake were assessed using 42 model runs obtained from 26 General Circulation Models (GCMs) of the newest generation in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Two CMIP5 scenarios defined by Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP), namely RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, were used to explore climate change impacts. The daily precipitation over Lake Victoria for the period 1962–2002 was compared with future projections for the 2040s and 2075s. The ability of GCMs to project daily, monthly and annual precipitation over the lake was evaluated based on the mean error, root mean square error and the frequency of occurrence of extreme precipitation. Higher resolution models (grid size 2.5°). The total annual precipitation is expected to increase by less than 10% for the RCP4.5 scenario and less than 20% for the RCP8.5 scenario over the 21st century, despite the higher (up to 40%) increase in extreme daily intensities.status: publishe