Water Supply and Sanitary Engineering (WSSE)
Department of Urban Water and Sanitation
The sustainable provision of safe and reliable drinking water and sanitation remain as the major challenges facing both the developing and industrialized regions in the world. The issues of water supply and sanitation are dealt with in depth in the two sub-cores: Water Supply Engineering and Sanitary Engineering.
Water Supply Engineering
In rural and peri-urban areas in developing countries there is a continued need for the development and application of low-cost appropriate treatment and distribution technologies. In the industrialized regions the fast growth of the urbanized populations and the increasing constraints on the development and use of water resources have spurred measures to conserve and reuse water. These include demand management, reduction of water losses use of surface water, groundwater recharge, municipal reuse in dual water supply systems, industrial reuse and wastewater reuse for irrigation.
Activities
The Water Supply Engineering (WSE) core group is involved in the generation and transfer of knowledge related to both appropriate low-cost technologies and advanced drinking water and industrial water treatment and distribution. The group addresses a wide range of issues, such as the further development and wider use of membrane technology, ground and surface water treatment, low-cost treatment of surface water, reuse of industrial wastewater, water transport and distribution, etc.
The core group is responsible for the water supply modules in the MSc programme in Municipal Water and Infrastructure, and offers short courses in water transport and distribution, and in membrane technology. The core group supports several UNESCO-IHE capacity building projects, particularly the one in Kumasi, Ghana.
Sanitary Engineering
The Sanitary Engineering (SE) core group contributes to the planning, development and sustainable operation of wastewater and sanitation systems in low- and middle-income countries. The work of the group supports the global efforts to provide universal and sustainable access to wastewater and sanitation services within the coming decades. In responding to these immediate challenges, the core group recognizes the need for new technologies, and focuses on the application and optimization of mainstreamed (i.e. proven) technologies for the collection, conveyance, treatment and disposal components of such systems.
Specific areas of wastewater treatment include optimization and troubleshooting of municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants, integration of sewage collection and treatment components, applied modelling (activated sludge and anaerobic digestion models), development of decision support systems (DSS) for the selection for wastewater and leachate treatment technologies, advanced nutrient removal from wastewater including aspects of biological process fundamentals, soil aquifer treatment of wastewater and activated sludge, and evaluation of environmental impacts of wastewater treatment systems as well as other components of urban water.
More information
For more information about the research activities in the core group refere to the brochure
An emerging research line within this core group is ecological sanitation, where the focus is on
- urine-diversion dehydrating toilets with downstream processing and reuse, for applications in urban slums, peri-urban areas and for emergency sanitation, and
- options for improving faecal sludge management, to enable the safe reuse of water and nutrients (e.g. in urban agriculture) with the potential for energy recovery via decentralized biogas plants.
As part of its awareness raising activities, UNESCO-IHE has installed urine-diversion urinals and toilets throughout the campus. A video clip provides more information on the installation of these facilities: view video 1and video 2 ( requires Windows Mediaplayer).