Water and Sanitation in Low Income Countries

Health and wellbeing though universal WASH services

This community of practice is a group of researchers from the environmental, engineering and social sciences who are tackling the challenges of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in a rapidly changing global climate.

The big challenges that we are addressing are:

• Improving rural water supply, focusing on water security and seasonal impacts of supply. Many rural communities in semi-arid areas experience highly seasonal rainfall which is mostly lost as run-off. As the dry season progresses, their water sources dry up and communities have to travel further to collect water which often has poor quality. By retaining water and encouraging aquifer recharge, water sources can remain sustainable throughout the dry season. We are seeking to understand the water balance and quality implications of these systems.
• Scaling safe urban sanitation, focusing on how to reach city-wide inclusive sanitation. The scope of research includes the institutional framework, technologies and business models. In many dense urban environments, there is no sewage infrastructure and the management of non-sewered sanitation is inadequate. We need to answer the wider questions of whether advanced technology for on-site sanitation can be appropriate in these settings and on the roles and responsibilities of all actors; public, private and third sector.

These challenges are exacerbated by climate change, which has serious implications for the livelihoods of the global poor, particularly affecting their water security and increasing health risks. Communities are already innovating and adapting, but these actions can be poorly coordinated. Urbanisation is changing the way that services need to be delivered. Dense environments mean that at least some centralisation is required, but service providers are not able to keep pace with the rapid rate of urban growth. Interventions can have a wide reaching impact. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted how essential it is to understand hygiene behaviours to prevent and protect human health during infectious disease outbreaks.

We work with project partners to ensure that our projects are relevant and useful for those working on the ground. We partner with industry, other academic institutions, and local and international NGOs to co-design projects, implement research and deliver results. We strive to ensure all stakeholders are involved in research projects from start to finish. Working with project partners encourages cross-disciplinary learning for all parties involved and promotes diversity within our research and practice.

Our areas of work

Urban sanitation

In many dense urban environments, there is no sewerage infrastructure and the management of on-site sanitation is inadequate. Our research in urban sanitation looks across the whole sanitation chain, working with mandated authorities to achieve citywide inclusive sanitation. We are interested in understanding the drivers and barriers for scaling safe onsite sanitation services including pit emptying and transport. We are interested in how existing private sector service providers, formal and informal, can scale into low-income areas, and can be regulated at a local and national level. We are evaluating novel sanitation solutions including (i) simplified sewers, which have reduced gradients, smaller diameter pipes and shallower excavation depths when compared with conventional systems are all features which enable them to serve informal settlements and (ii) container-based sanitation, where small cartridges of waste are collected weekly from households. As these approached scale up, it will have impacts on people’s wellbeing, institutions and other resources, and we are seeking to understand these impacts.

Improving the institutional functioning of the water and sanitation sector

The sustainable provision of water and sanitation services require effective institutional systems that facilitate ongoing service delivery, management and financing at appropriate scales. We are seeking to better understand the characteristics of such systems, including power dynamics and behaviours. This work interfaces with our work on urban sanitation, but we are also understanding the role of catchment-based actors and institutions in causing and managing freshwater pollution. In this context, we are envisioning to explore how power shapes the dynamics of catchment-based actors and institutions as well as their sustenance and legitimacy in the existing water regulatory and governance mechanisms.

Circular economy

The circular economy is a popular topic in the WASH sector. We recognise that the proper management of human waste usually involves producing other products, like fertiliser, water and animal feed. However, our research has shown that this process is challenging to manage, and is not very profitable. Thus environmental health and dignity should drive the sanitation value chain, not financial gain.

However, we have a wider interest in waste management, for example the mismanagement of sachet waste, which can block drains and pollute water sources. We are raising awareness of real-world challenges and solutions. In practice, this can prompt different stakeholders, such as companies and local authorities, to adopt circular initiatives and promote public outreach and engagement practices.

Preventing exposure to waterborne pathogens

Our research is focused on influencing the development of safely managed water and sanitation systems aimed at preventing exposure to waterborne pathogens and thereby reducing the prevalence of infectious disease. We combine research into novel identification techniques with pathogen removal and monitoring programmes and computational modelling of filtration systems to understand the behaviour and dynamics of waterborne pathogens, developing innovative approaches to improve both the detection and management of contamination. By integrating these methods, we aim to provide practical, scalable solutions that will enhance water safety and reduce the burden of waterborne diseases in vulnerable communities.

Sustainable innovation in water and sanitation

Understanding the fundamental science underpinning existing sanitation and water treatment technologies is crucial to develop new and innovative solutions. We combine expertise in the biological, chemical, physical and social sciences to understand the processes affecting sanitation and water systems, and how these systems can be improved. We conduct bench, pilot and real-world scale experiments in our research labs and in-field to develop sustainable technologies for treating water, wastewater and faecal sludge.

Sustainable groundwater

Ninety-eight percent of Earth's available fresh water is groundwater. It collects under the Earth’s surface, filling porous spaces in soil, rocks and sediments. We drill into these spaces to access the water for domestic, agricultural and industrial water supplies. Groundwater is replenished by rain and snow melts and is becoming more and more important for regions experiencing water scarcity as surface waters dry up. This said, it is a finite resource that needs sustainable and effective management which can be improved through research, policy and developing technical capacity.

Many rural communities in semi-arid areas experience highly seasonal rainfall which is mostly lost as run-off. As the dry season progresses their water sources dry up and they have to travel further to collect water which often has poor water quality. By retaining water and encouraging aquifer recharge, water sources can remain sustainable throughout the dry season. This can be defined as a nature-based solution. We are seeking to understand the water balance and quality implications of these systems. We are also looking at ways of identifying new sites for water harvesting using remote sensing methods, and modelling recharge processes.

Current research is focusing on groundwater vulnerability in dry-land regions. We are interested in assessing both the physical and social systems to improve water security for rural and rapidly growing communities by influencing policy and decision making.

Recent publications

• Mdee A, Ofori AD, Barrington D, Anciano F, Dube M, .... (2025). On a journey to citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS)? A political economy analysis of container-based sanitation (CBS) in the fragmented (in)formal city. Globalizations, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print)
• Grisaffi C, Leinster P, Mugo K, Drabble S & Parker A. (2025). Safe faecal sludge emptying and transport: compliance challenges and models for a public good. H2Open Journal, 8(3)
• Barrington DJ, Sindall RC, Chinyama A, Morse T, Sule MN, .... (2025). The persistence of failure in water, sanitation and hygiene programming: a qualitative study. BMJ Global Health, 10(2)
• Awolorinke AC, Ofori AD, Setiawati MD & Issifu N. (2025). Beyond participation: power relations, information flows, and collaboration in water governance: a case of the Pra River Basin, Ghana. International Journal of River Basin Management, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print)
• Sultana MS, Waine T, Bari N & Tyrrel S. (2025). Sanitation infrastructure and faecal flow – SanIFFlow: a spatial mapping tool for integrated planning and management of sanitation in unsewered urban areas. Geomatica, 77(1)
• Lewis AR, Bell AR, Casas A, Kupiec-Teahan B, Mendoza Sanchez J, .... (2024). Comparative sanitation data from high-frequency phone surveys across 3 countries. Data in Brief, 55
• Ritchie H, Holman I, Nyangoka J, Bauman P & Parker A. (2024). Insights from electrical resistivity tomography on the hydrogeological interaction between sand dams and the weathered basement aquifer. Journal of Applied Geophysics, 230
• Mdee A, Ofori AD, Cohen J, Kjellén M, Rooney E, .... (2024). Obscuring Complexity and Performing Progress: Unpacking SDG Indicator 6.5.1 and the Implementation of IWRM. Water Alternatives, 17(2)
• Nartey EG, Sakrabani R, Tyrrel S & Cofie O. (2024). Storage duration and temperature affect pathogen load, heavy metals, and nutrient levels in faecal derived fertiliser. Environmental Technology, 45(27)
• Yadav B, Parker A, Sharma A, Sharma R, Krishan G, .... (2023). Estimation of groundwater recharge in semiarid regions under variable land use and rainfall conditions: a case study of Rajasthan, India. PLOS Water, 2(3)