- 1: Introduction.
- 2: Timing.
- 3: Sub-steps.
- 4: Products, expected outcomes and library .
Description of settlement conditions, with assessment of existing sanitation situation and user priorities
Introduction
The purpose of this step in the planning procedure is to collect background information necessary to determine the requirements for a sanitation system from both technical and user perspectives. The collected information will provide the technical details necessary for system design and identifying and prioritising community needs related to water and sanitation. This step is performed through a comprehensive, participatory assessment of the current level of services and user attitudes towards sanitation across the domains of the project area. The goal of this step is not only to facilitate participatory decision-making in the planning process, but also to enable further designs to meet user needs and address the operation and maintenance challenges of day-to-day service delivery. The information collected during this step will be used to identify what is missing in terms of sanitation, as well as the priorities of the users. This will be fed into the next step of identifying the feasible sanitation options and concepts.
What is needed to carry out this step?
Sanitation planning team has to be already operational and its activities must have the acceptance and support of the population and various stakeholders. The aim of this step has to be explained to the population in a way appropriate to local situation. Division of tasks among the team members has to be clarified. The ways and methods of collecting information on existing situation and user priorities have to be planned in a tailor-made way to fit to the local socio-economic, administrative, cultural traditions and practices.
In the identification of external factors (sub-step 4) there is a need to go also outside the project area for basic data collection. Some data may be available in the Internet, but most likely central or regional level offices have to be approached to get basic hydrological data, information on the availability of water, groundwater situation etc.