Getting the foundations right in sanitation and waste management

Professor Barbara Evans, Dr Miller Alonso Camargo-Valero and Dr Dani Barrington from the School of Civil Engineering will deliver a workshop on faecal sludge management at the WASH Futures Conference.

The workshop, entitled ‘Getting the foundations right: sanitation and public heath engineering’, aims to address the need for a strong foundation in sanitation and public health engineering to achieve effective modern sanitation in urban and rural areas in low-income and transitional economies.

Many sanitation approaches fail because technical solutions are either inappropriate or not appropriately designed, installed or maintained and there is often a lack of basic technical knowledge available at the local level. 

Assessing which of the many sanitation technologies are suited to different contexts must be based upon an accurate understanding of the processes driving sanitation and wastewater treatment, and of the transmission pathways of WASH-related health problems.

This workshop will introduce participants to the principles and practice of public health engineering to bridge the gap between theory, policy and practice and explore key technologies in sanitation and wastewater management.

Barbara also joins WASH Futures 2018 as a Keynote speaker to discuss the big picture challenges in WASH.

Dr Barrington is also presenting within the section for understanding and improving WASH in schools. The presentation will address how to improve WASH in Pacific Island schools by embracing local epistemologies.

Further Information

The WASH Futures 2018 conference takes place in Brisbane, Australia 5 – 9 March 2018. The conference comprises two days of conference-style sessions, with parallel streams addressing specific themes relating to the conference theme collaboration for universal WASH, followed by three days of training and workshops on emergent WASH topics.