Description
In 1999 the United Nations acknowledged that the development gap between rich and poor countries was widening: about three-fifths of the world's population lacked access to basic sanitation and one-third did not have access to safe drinking water. In spite of many initiatives and efforts, the sanitation issue is still largely unresolved; it is estimated that 2.3 billion people - primarily in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean - still lack access to basic sanitation (toilet). To address this challenge, in 2015, the global community adopted a Sustainable Development Goal dedicated to clean water and sanitation (SDG 6). Target 6.2 under this Goal calls for, "by 2030, achieving access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and ending open defecation."
The objectives of the Feasibility Study are to:
- assess the technical feasibility and viability of space based services in support of sanitation for developing economies;
- identify and assess the technical and non-technical risks associated with theimplementation and operations of the to-be-proposed services;
- establish the roadmap for service implementation through a potential follow-on demonstration project.
The study will address the following main topics:
- Smart Sanitation Economy, which builds on the sanitation infrastructure to provide health information insights. This approach entails the installation of smart sensors into toilets and sewage systems to provide rapid data collection and analysis of health indicators.
- Circular Sanitation Economy deals with the cost-effective reutilisation of human waste, together with other biological waste, to produce a wide range of products, such as: agricultural products, energy, water, protein, etc.
The study will be supported by the Toilet Board Coalition -a business-led partnership addressing the global sanitation crisis by accelerating the Sanitation Economy- that will provide specific use cases and requirements derived from its two funded pilot projects in India and Africa.