This investment will enable the Public Health Engineering Department at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with the Project Management Group at the School of Business, to finalize specific costing examples and generalized costing models for cities wanting to understand the financial requirements for improving sanitation services at city level. So far Leeds have been preparing estimates based on real case studies in cities in Africa and India.
The examples are built from scratch, designing two or more ‘solutions’ for real communities and then estimating costs of those. The novelty is in the way Leeds are attempting to identify and model the whole life-time costs – so for the first time really trying to understand the financial ‘package’ needed to run both off-site and on-site options. On the basis of those, we can start having sensible conversations at the city level about how to structure user fees, operational subsidies and capital subsidies to get the best outcome without distorting incentives.
BMGF grant database (brief information)
Website of Institute for Public Health and Environmental Engineering
Market developmentRenewable energies and climate changeCitiesOperation, maintenance and sustainable servicesGlobalOtherBill & Melinda Gates FoundationUrban (entire city)Politicians and local decision makersUniversity, education or research institution
IndiaUnited Kingdom
Project location