Decision support system for selection of appropriate water supply and sanitation technologies in developing countries

Access to water supply and sanitation services remains a challenge in many parts of the world. The expected growth of the world's population, from about 7.8 billion people today to 9.8 billion people by 2050, and to around 11 billion people by the end of 2100, will create even higher demand and a greater strain on these basic services. Goal 6 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) aims to ‘Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ by 2030. However, in a recent report, UN-Water warns us that if things continue on the current path, the world will miss the targets of SDG 6. The selection of appropriate water and sanitation technologies is key to meeting SDG 6 targets. This paper presents an original framework of a decision support system (DSS) for the selection of appropriate water supply and sanitation (Watsan) technologies in developing countries. The proposed DSS has three components. The first component is the user interface, where the inputs are the assessment of a community's capacity to manage a given water supply or sanitation system, and its regional specificity. The second component of the DSS is a database of Watsan technologies classified according to the capacity requirement level (CRL) metric, and finally, the third component is a matching algorithm for the selection of appropriate Watsan technology options. Case studies and simulations results are presented for the evaluation of the performance of the decision support system. HIGHLIGHTS A decision support system (DSS) is used for the selection of appropriate Watsan technologies.; A capacity factor analysis (CFA) is used for the assessment of the community's capacity to operate a Watsan service sustainably.; A database of Watsan technologies classified by capacity requirement level (CRL) is used.; A matching model uses an algorithm to match a community to a set of appropriate Watsan technologies.