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The world society faces a huge challenge to implement the human right of “access to sanitation”. More and more it is accepted that the conventional approach towards providing sanitation services is not suitable to solve this problem. This dissertation examines the possibility to enhance “access to sanitation” for people who are living in areas with underdeveloped water and wastewater infrastructure systems. The idea hereby is to follow an integrated approach for sanitation, which allows for a mutual completion of existing infrastructure with resource-based sanitation systems.
The notion “integrated sanitation system (iSaS)” is defined in this work and guiding principles for iSaS are formulated. Further on the implementation of iSaS is assessed at the example of a case study in the city of Darkhan in Mongolia. More than half of Mongolia’s population live in settlements where yurts (tents of Nomadic people) are predominant. In these settlements (or “ger areas”) sanitation systems are not existent and the hygienic situation is precarious.
An iSaS has been developed for the ger areas in Darkhan and tested over more than two years. Further on a software-based model has been developed with the goal to describe and assess different variations of the iSaS. The results of the assessment of material-flows, monetary-flows and communication-flows within the iSaS are presented in this dissertation. The iSaS model is adaptable and transferable to the socio-economic conditions in other regions and climate zones.
Abstract Developing and emerging tropical Asian countries have encountered fast urban development due to the migration of farmers seeking a better life in the city. This resulted in a lack of appro-priate infrastructure and inappropriate social services in many cities. Municipal solid waste management is no exception and is in fact often placed at the bottom of the list of priorities for the cities’ appropriate urban management plans since laws and regulations must first be for-mulated and implemented. The problem of unmanaged municipal solid waste certainly leads to air pollution, disease, and to soil and water contamination. These problems in tropical climates are compounded with high temperature, high-level humidity, heavy rainfall and frequent flooding. Stagnant water and leachate from waste quickly become the breeding grounds of in-sects, rodents and bacteria, thus creating a health hazard for workers and local populations. Moreover, water and groundwater contamination may lead to serious environmental degrada-tion with direct impacts on water supplies, and in the fast degradation of agricultural products, the backbone of most tropical Asian countries. Many cities still allow or tolerate dumping of waste in uncontrolled sites, and open burning that disperses particulates that most likely contain dioxins and furans. Even with increasingly scarce land availability within or in proximity of the cities, sanitary landfill is still the most often cho-sen disposal method around Asia because of its lower cost when compared to modern treatment systems. Yet, most of these landfill sites do not have proper lining, daily covering, methane recovery devices, leachate control systems, nor do they have long-term closure and monitoring plans, which implies short and long-term hazards. Some municipalities opted for incineration, which usually entails high operation and maintenance costs because of the need for supple-mental fuel and often-inappropriate running conditions. Although tropical conditions appear to favor certain disposal systems such as composting, appropriate technology needs to be identi-fied in order to reduce operation and maintenance costs while ensuring good quality outputs; compost plants have often been closed because of poor quality products due to the high content of plastic and glass particulates in the finished product. Tropical Asian cities are now required to identify affordable and sustainable solutions for the management of their increasing amount of waste generated daily, while ensuring minimal environmental impact, social acceptance and minimal land use. The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a user-friendly decision-making tool for public administrators and government officials in tropical Asian developing and emerging cities. This tool was developed based on a list of selected decision-making issues necessary in making an informed decision. The decision-making tool is to be used by decision-makers in making a pre-liminary assessment of a most appropriate waste management and treatment system for their municipality. Tropical Asian cities must consider a number of issues when deciding on their waste management plan such as the continuously changing quantum and composition of waste associated with the increasing population and income per capita, the high humidity levels, and the often-limited financial resources. Other determinant factors include legal, political, institu-tional, social and technical issues. Furthermore, administrators must realize the importance of each stage involved in waste management, which includes waste generation, collection, trans-port, waste characteristics, disposal and treatment. To better understand the complexity of the issues involved in tropical Asian municipalities, the city of Bangkok, Thailand’s largest city and capital, was selected as a case study for the management of its 9,000 tonnes of waste gen-erated daily. Numerous interviews, meetings along with the review of documents, reports and site visits offered an inside view of the tropical city’s various decision-making issues towards its waste management plan, and examine specific problems encountered by the city’s decision-makers. The review and analysis of the decision-making issues involved in Bangkok’s waste management plan showed how the decision-making tool can be used in various Asian tropical cities. In conclusion, waste management in an emerging tropical country involves specific challenges that need to be addressed. Economical, technical and social criteria need to be fully understood as to capacitate government officials in the selection of the most appropriate urban waste man-agement system. Limited budgets, lack of public awareness and poor systems’ management often cloud decision-makers in choosing what appears to be the best solution in the short term, but more costly over the years. Weather conditions and scarcity of land in proximity of the city make waste management especially challenging. The decision-making framework offers a tool to decision-makers, as to facilitate the understanding and identification of key issues necessary in the formulation of a sustainable urban waste management plan and in the selection of a tech-nically, economically and socially acceptable integrated MSW management system. A detailed feasibility study and master plan will follow the preliminary study as to define the plant´s specifications, its location and its financing.