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This paper identifies opportunities from targeted and integrated sanitation action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is contextualised to the case of Brazil through a systematic approach applied to the sanitation sector that considers the range of infrastructure, management services and people involved in different phases of the service chain, from municipal wastewater containment to safe disposal or re‐use. Articulating the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sanitation, this study analyses their links with each of the 169 SDG targets. We demonstrate that 87 targets across 16 goals require action in Brazil's sanitation sector to achieve the SDGs. Furthermore, we identify synergies between sanitation and 124 targets in four domains: basic services for resilience building, equity and empowerment, pollution reduction and waste reuse and economic well‐being. Key results include the need for Brazil to invest in closed‐loop systems that valorise waste as a resource and the need to multiply efforts in the integrated provision of basic services in low‐income areas most affected by the lack of access to adequate sanitation. The links identified are supported by the compiled evidence of published research. The analysis of linkages through this structured approach aims to highlight opportunities for strategic governance action to support policy harmonisation and partnerships across Brazil's sanitation sector and beyond. With this research, we show that establishing linkages among the SDGs provides an adaptable framework that can support policy‐makers and practitioners seeking to deliver on the 2030 Agenda.

Solar home systems (SHSs) have seen rapid growth and have proven to be a viable source of electricity for households due to their capability to reach remote users that do not have access to grid systems. Based on a comprehensive literature review of 139 papers focussing on SHSs in Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper highlights the key trends, research gaps and policy recommendations. The literature was categorised into four themes: institutional, technology, viability and user-centric. The review finds that the current primary themes of research are technology, user-centric and viability. This highlights the need for further research into the institutional barriers of SHSs, as well as the regulatory frameworks and incentives needed to increase their adoption. The most popular topics discussed in the reviewed literature included SHS business models, SHS design, the energy demand of end-users and barriers to SHS adoption. The authors also identified paucity of research in countries with low electrification rates, highlighting new locations for SHS research.

This article evaluates the stakeholder consultation process that was undertaken to support decision-making for the new sanitation authority to be established in Ghana. This initiative of creating a...

This practice paper concerns the management of occupational exposure risks during the operation of container-based sanitation (CBS) systems. The paper reports on findings based on three different CBS systems. An exposure risk assessment was conducted in each case study following a methodology adapted from the WHO Sanitation Safety Planning (SSP) Framework. The specific methods of data collection comprised a risk assessment workshop, as well as in-depth interviews and sanitary surveys to support and explain the findings from the risk assessment workshops. The analysis of the occupational exposure risks classified exposure risks into four categories of ‘drivers’ of exposure risk. These ‘drivers’ were supported by relevant secondary literature of exposure risk studies. The classification of hazardous events and exposure risks in CBS systems recognized: (1) the role of technical design and maintenance and condition of facilities, as well as manual aspects of labour; followed by (2) human behaviour; (3) system performance; and (4) physical environment. This classification is expected to simplify the exposure risk management process and provides a framework for the subsequent identification and management of occupational exposure in CBS systems. The framework is an additional tool within the sanitation safety planning toolkit to measure and manage exposure risks and thereby ensure safe sanitation performance. This research addresses a current knowledge gap in occupational exposure risks in CBS systems. The integration and use of these results in an adapted SSP framework may build a stronger business case for the adoption of CBS systems in city-wide urban sanitation sector planning.

OBJECTIVE: Clinical rotations during medical school are the time when most students select their specialty. Limited or lack of exposure could deter students from certain sub-specialties, and thus, insight into the selection process is essential. This study assesses the role of limited clinical rotations and perception of students on specialty selection. METHODS: All graduating medical students were surveyed at our US-based institution for 2 years. The survey included both open- and close-ended questions related to influence of clerkship experience and other factors on specialty choice and suggestions for improvement. The data were analyzed descriptively and thematically. RESULTS: Majority of students (87%) had minimal exposure to their chosen residency specialty prior to the third-year clerkships. Role of a clerkship experience in selecting a specialty was significant for 70% students, especially interaction with attendings (92%) and residents (86.3%). The most influential reasons for specialty choice to change were clerkship experience (41%) and mentors (21%). Approximately 34% students chose a specialty that was not a part of third-year core clerkships, and the most significant factors influencing their choice were shadowing experience (21%) and lifestyle (18%). Further, thematic analysis suggested that earlier and more clinical exposure to various specialties and formal mentoring could make specialty selection process easier. CONCLUSIONS: Along with specialty content, the relationship of learners and teachers in the clinical setting plays a significant role in selecting and/or rejecting certain specialty by medical students. The study provides broader baseline data for medical schools and educators in preparation of curriculum and future physician workforce composition.

Solar home systems (SHSs) are successfully addressing energy access deficits across the globe, particularly when combined with pay-as-you-go (PAYG) payment models, allowing households to pay for energy services in small instalments. To increase energy access, it is vital to understand the PAYG SHS customer journey in depth. To aid this, the paper presents unique data from active customers, consisting of structured interviews (n = 100) and two focus groups (n = 24) across two districts in Rwanda. These results are presented under a novel customer journey framework, which describes all the individual stages a customer might experience, including awareness and understanding, purchase, usage, upgrade, recommendation and retaining or switching energy source. The paper reveals that the customer journey is non-linear and cyclical in nature, acknowledging that a household operates in a social network within which they could influence or be influenced by others. It also highlights the growing importance of SHS recommendations in raising awareness of SHSs, pointing to the shifts in the off-grid energy market environment where customer awareness no longer appears to be a main adoption barrier.

Family farmers in Brazil could diversify their sources of income and improve agriculture practices by adopting circular economy principles on their farms. Closed-loop technological systems can be used to manage organic waste and produce fertiliser and biogas thereby generating revenue. Anaerobic Digestion (AD) is a proven technology that can produce digestate (i.e. fertiliser) and biogas from organic waste, although digestate application in soil and crops without treatment can have adverse effects. However, in practice, there is a lack of knowledge about the benefits of recycling organic waste in farming communities in Brazil. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to provide conceptual design configurations of closed-loop systems that manage organic waste and generate revenue for small farms in Brazil. A literature review of selected technologies and interviews with Brazilian family farmers were used to inform the components of the proposed conceptual designs. The proposed designs are based on circular economy principles, incorporating AD, pyrolysis for biochar, hydroponics and vermifiltration in various configurations. A complete closed-loop system consisting of a 7.5 m3 digester, pyrolysis unit, a combined hydroponic and vermifilter unit and a shredder is estimated to cost around USD$1600 (R$ 6600). The flexibility of the proposed systems has the potential to increase resilience and income for small-scale farmers, whilst encouraging good practices for waste management. The conceptual designs can be used as a basis for further research and development of small-scale organic waste management solutions in Brazil.

The lack of accessible crime data, especially geolocations, in developing countries often acts as a barrier to identifying environmental or situational factors in high crime areas that might contribute to the facilitation of those crimes. This paper presents a methodology for conducting fieldwork for creating heat maps to identify areas prone to violence against women (VAW) in Corregidora, Mexico. Heat maps were produced based on household survey data. The results were used to select specific high concentration locations to conduct structured observations and inductive visual analysis at street level in order to identify if and what situational factors might influence the perpetration of VAW in those locations. Four broad features were identified in the urban built environment during the site visits linked to the facilitation of opportunities for the commission of VAW: (1) lacking infrastructure, (2) presence of physical obstacles, (3) poor visibility and (4) restricted pedestrian mobility. The paper demonstrates the utility of this method for aiding situational crime prevention strategies in areas where official spatial crime data is unavailable or lacking. This study presents a relatively low cost (although labour intensive) and independent method of aiding crime prevention strategies, which will hopefully be of practical value for organisations in areas with poor crime recording practices and limited access to expensive mapping technologies.

Solar Home Systems (SHSs) and other off-grid solutions have shown promise in addressing the energy access gap for those with no or unreliable grid services. With that promise comes the expectation to boost socio-economic well-being of newly-connected households, who will continue climbing up the energy ladder. Despite the growing appreciation for the need to go beyond the techno-economics of energy access, and the recognition of the value of socio-technical systems perspective, the wider sociology of energy consumption and behaviour among adopters of off-grid solar solutions has been poorly explored. In this paper, we apply the Social Practice Theory (SPT) and the energy and solar energy ladder framework to analyse energy consumption and the changing social practices of SHSs users in Rwanda. We find that social practices change dynamically and depend on available appliances, whereas energy consumption follows a complex path but does not increase in a linear manner with time or more appliances. Insights can prove useful for public and private agencies working on off-grid electrification, offering a new perspective on the energy and solar energy ladder concepts while also showing the importance of social aspects of energy access even at relatively low levels of provision currently offered by SHSs.

This paper focuses on the use of Future Scenario Planning and an adaptation of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework as analysis tools for informed decision-making in a community workshop. The aim of this methodology was to assess the perceived impacts of two infrastructure interventions for flood mitigation (local drainage improvement and local flood protection by gabions along the river edges) in the Andolo community in Kibera, Nairobi, in Kenya. Future Scenario Planning was used as a visualisation method for the changes each intervention could bring to the community and the perceived impacts were measured using the assets component of the British Department for International Development (DFID)'s Sustainable Livelihoods Framework. The exercise was delivered as a two-day workshop, which ensured community engagement and facilitated co-decision making of an infrastructure intervention. The process was helpful to ensure sustainability in the use and maintenance of a public space, as well as for initiating conversations within the community regarding critical infrastructure and prioritisation of interventions for mitigating immediate risks.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—including 17 interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets—is a global plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. SDG7 calls for action to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. Here we characterize synergies and trade-offs between efforts to achieve SDG7 and delivery of the 2030 Agenda as a whole. We identify 113 targets requiring actions to change energy systems, and published evidence of relationships between 143 targets (143 synergies, 65 trade-offs) and efforts to achieve SDG7. Synergies and trade-offs exist in three key domains, where decisions about SDG7 affect humanity’s ability to: realize aspirations of greater welfare and well-being; build physical and social infrastructures for sustainable development; and achieve sustainable management of the natural environment. There is an urgent need to better organize, connect and extend this evidence, to help all actors work together to achieve sustainable development. The UN’s Agenda for Sustainable Development has 17 goals with 169 targets for action across a range of issues, with access to sustainable energy for all being Goal 7. This Perspective analyses interlinkages between energy systems, Goal 7 and the other goals at the target level, identifying synergies and trade-offs between them.

Energy access is typically viewed as a problem for rural areas, but people living in urban settings also face energy challenges that have not received sufficient attention. A revised agenda in research and practice that puts the user and local planning complexities centre stage is needed to change the way we look at energy access in urban areas, to understand the implications of the concentration of vulnerable people in slums and to identify opportunities for planned management and innovation that can deliver urban energy transitions while leaving no one behind. Here, we propose a research agenda focused on three key issues: understanding the needs of urban energy users; enabling the use of context-specific, disaggregated data; and engaging with effective modes of energy and urban governance. This agenda requires interdisciplinary scholarship across the social and physical sciences to support local action and deliver large-scale, inclusive transformations.

This case study intends to show how Internet of Things (IoT) technology can be used to tackle development challenges by using the case study of BBOXX- a Solar Home Systems provider operating in South-Western Kenya and across Rwanda, and its SMART Solar platform applied to nearly 20,000 currently active systems. It aims to highlight the benefits of such technology to its users and how it can be utilised to create scalable business models for energy access through improved customer understanding. However, it also shows the difficulties in designing, developing and deploying appropriate technologies in an affordable and impactful way. Similar applications in the water sector are briefly looked at to further explore the potential and the challenges of IoT technologies in driving social and economic development. The case study raises ethical questions about the storage, collection and sharing of data and explores whether the data protection models prevalent in the developed world are applicable in a development context. It offers ideas for future research and policy recommendations, pointing to the need of including financial, socio-economic and ethical considerations in the processes of innovative solutions development.

Growing urban centres have been attracting ever higher numbers of rural migrants, including small-scale farmers, looking for better opportunities due to the rise of large-scale farming, loss of land and climate change. Consequently, there has been an increase in the number of spontaneous and informal settlements being constructed as cities do not keep up with the planning and infrastructure development for new arrivals. Urban dwellers in informal, unplanned settlements where issues of land tenure and access to services are prevalent have, consequently, been exposed to precarious living conditions with limited access to food and water scarcity. Urban agriculture (UA) strategies have been adopted by those residents to alleviate poverty and food insecurity, and have been seen to perform other functions, such as environmental, social, cultural and developmental. This study explores challenges and opportunities for sustainable urban farming as an integrated environmental management strategy for the upgrading of informal settlements in three case studies in Durban. This paper demonstrates the need for municipalities to support community driven processes to ensure sustainability of UA initiatives and sustained investment for maintenance. Policy makers need to create an enabling environment for academics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector to co-develop water efficient solutions to manage the food-water nexus and capitalise on localised community structures and groups, such as co-operatives and women groups.

Women in low and middle-income countries predominantly use biofuel for cooking, resulting in potential adverse health outcomes. In India, it is estimated that about 40% of total primary energy consumption is in the domestic sector with biofuels alone accounting for about 75% of domestic energy consumption. This study assesses linkages between wood consumption and perceptions of women&rsquo, s health, combining results from a rapid assessment of eight rural districts in Rajasthan with a regression analysis of data from Rajasthan State (sample size 41,965 women) from the Demographic and Health Survey 7 dataset (2015&ndash, 2016). The results of the rapid survey indicate that women who cook with biofuels perceive adverse health outcomes. Educational level, income, and age have an impact on fuel consumption and clean fuel purchased. The regression model drawing upon data on women at a regional level in Rajasthan yielded significant results suggesting a strong association between fuel type and symptoms of respiratory infection controlling for age and education. This research is timely as it provides valuable evidence for India&rsquo, s Ujjawala Scheme which has the mandate of providing LPG connections to women from below the poverty line.

The lack of adequate public toilets and associated gender-based violence around their use is a matter of concern in many developing countries and has recently come to the forefront of the political...

‘Achieving sustained environmental health improvements in Freetown through faecal sludge management enterprises’ was a partnership project between Freetown City Council (FCC), International Water Association (IWA), and GOAL. This project aimed to improve faecal sludge management (FSM) through public – private partnerships and improved financial flows to ensure viability of businesses. A market assessment was conducted in Freetown which considered demand and supply for FSM services. This paper discusses findings from the household survey which was a key component of the market assessment. While the households felt that they were getting value for money for existing services, they were not satisfied with existing services and hence were willing to pay higher prices for improved services. This highlights the importance of quality service provision in relation to revenue generation. Improved pit emptying services was noted to be of high priority to households. In order to improve pit emptying services the FSM strategy proposed intermediate transfer stations and formation of a Sanitation Unit and Contact Centre within FCC.

Equitable provision of physical infrastructure must be seen as a prerequisite for achieving the sustainability of human settlements. Infrastructure provision needs to consider both the product (physical services) and the context in which the services will be provided and maintained in order to be sustainable. This article presents a holistic methodology for evaluating sustainability and poverty reduction impact of infrastructure projects in developing countries through societal, economics, institutional and environmental dimensions. ASPIRE toolkit uses qualitative evidence which feeds into 96 indicators producing visual outputs which can encourage users to consider contextual issues and develop valuable trade-offs between the four dimensions. The methodology and toolkit are applied to the evaluation of an infrastructure upgrading project in Korail, Bangladesh. The Urban Partnership for Poverty Reduction Project (UPPRP) in Korail supports a twin-pronged approach of provision of infrastructure (water, sanitation, roads and drainage) improvement through the Slum Improvement Fund and improvement of socio-economic conditions through the Socio-Economic Funds. The ASPIRE assessment allowed the authors to interrogate strengths and weaknesses of the UPPR project thereby demonstrating the value added by ASPIRE. Overall, the project was deemed successful in Korail. Socially, it allowed access to all types of services to the slum's residents with strong community engagement. Land security however was noted to be a challenge, which needs to be addressed by institutions in Dhaka.

Energy access is crucial for human well-being and poverty reduction. In sub-Saharan Africa, the failure of grid systems to provide electricity access to last mile users has led to the rapid scale up of off-grid solutions. The authors examine synergies and tradeoffs between solar off-grid solutions and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Rwanda which as a nation has successfully implemented innovative solar off-grid systems at scale. This paper is the first to map the relationship between energy and the 169 Targets of the 2030 Agenda in a specific country and sector context by operationalising the framework developed in Fuso Nerini et al. (2018). By doing so, this paper demonstrates the need for context-specific rapid assessment tools to monitor and improve energy access. The paper identifies synergies between 80 (47%) of the SDG targets and off-grid solar systems in Rwanda, thus demonstrating the wideranging benefits and value added through the inclusion of the off-grid solar energy sector in the electrification strategy. The paper demonstrates how mainstreaming off-grid policies and prioritising investment in the off-grid sector can realise human development and well-being, build physical and social infrastructures, and achieve sustainable management of environmental resources.

Highlights • COVID-19 has exposed service gaps in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in informal settlments in cities. • The vulnerability of informal settlements to COVID-19 is not accidental, but a result of the type of cities that were built. • The Sustainable Development Goals provide a framework for integrated actions in WASH benefitting other sectors. • Partnerships for interventions must consider scalar dynamics with different responses taken at different governance levels.

Different methods to incorporate research training during residency are suggested, however, long-term impact is not studied well. This study reports development of a research curriculum with milestones, a long-term outcome and sustainability, and its impact on the overall departmental research culture.The research curriculum that included a research seminar for resident preparation, annual milestones, and structured research mentoring was implemented in our hybrid program in 2012. The research output for five-year period before and after the implementation was evaluated as peer-reviewed publications, presentations, and grant submissions. Further, secondary effects on faculty and medical student research was evaluated.Following implementation, we observed a significant increase in the number of resident presentations (p 0.05) and higher trends for publications and grant submissions. Medical student research increased significantly in terms of both presentations and publications (p 0.05). Consequently, we observed a significant improvement in the overall department research productivity.Our resident research curriculum was associated with improved long-term research productivity. It allowed residents to work closely with faculty and medical students leading to more collaboration resulting in an enhanced scholarly environment.

Rwanda has one of the lowest electrification rates in Sub‐Saharan Africa and ambitious targets of boosting energy access, with an encouraged private sector involvement. However, barriers such as end‐user awareness and participation in policy and business model design prohibit the pace of rural electrification. A case of Rwanda is analyzed, pointing to the potential of the imihigo (performance contracts) framework. Given the adoption of household‐level performance contracts, which can include energy access, it is proposed they could drive local participation among off‐grid communities. Results of a survey with 218 users of Solar Home Systems in North‐Western Rwanda and from five focus groups show that village‐level energy targets impact on the prioritization of energy target setting among households. Including off‐grid energy options in the imihigo booklets distributed to households could influence awareness raising and allow private sector providers to act in a more targeted way, prioritizing areas with most prevalent energy targets. Additionally, community meetings (umuganda) tied to imihigo offer participatory spaces for information and feedback sharing. These will assist in the design of energy planning and business models, which best fit local needs and respond to the challenges faced by the energy poor. This article is categorized under: Energy and Development > Climate and Environment Energy Policy and Planning > Economics and Policy

Cities across the Global South are facing huge challenges associated with rapid urbanisation, lack of infrastructure services and climate change, including frequent storms and recurrent floods that inundate large areas of their urban landscape. Often, the worst affected groups are those living in low-income settlements located in floodplains of the city. Maxaquene A is an example of such a settlement in Maputo, Mozambique, a country with a strong history of storms and floods due to its geographical location. This paper describes a rapid flood risk assessment conducted by the authors, in Maxaquene A. The assessment obtained both community and external stakeholder perceptions of challenges in the neighbourhood, accompanied by a description of how floods have affected infrastructure such as drainage and sanitation, services such as pit emptying and solid waste collection, and localised infrastructure solutions developed by the community as a coping mechanism. The assessment highlighted the need for collaboration with community members to co-develop appropriate flood risk management strategies and infrastructure solutions. This work will pave the way for greater in-depth research with residents of Maxaquene A, neighbouring settlements in Maputo and other informal settlements in the Global South, to drive change in climate change adaptation across the built environment.

Background Research on the biology of parasites requires a sophisticated and integrated computational platform to query and analyze large volumes of data, representing both unpublished (internal) and public (external) data sources. Effective analysis of an integrated data resource using knowledge discovery tools would significantly aid biologists in conducting their research, for example, through identifying various intervention targets in parasites and in deciding the future direction of ongoing as well as planned projects. A key challenge in achieving this objective is the heterogeneity between the internal lab data, usually stored as flat files, Excel spreadsheets or custom-built databases, and the external databases. Reconciling the different forms of heterogeneity and effectively integrating data from disparate sources is a nontrivial task for biologists and requires a dedicated informatics infrastructure. Thus, we developed an integrated environment using Semantic Web technologies that may provide biologists the tools for managing and analyzing their data, without the need for acquiring in-depth computer science knowledge. Methodology/Principal Findings We developed a semantic problem-solving environment (SPSE) that uses ontologies to integrate internal lab data with external resources in a Parasite Knowledge Base (PKB), which has the ability to query across these resources in a unified manner. The SPSE includes Web Ontology Language (OWL)-based ontologies, experimental data with its provenance information represented using the Resource Description Format (RDF), and a visual querying tool, Cuebee, that features integrated use of Web services. We demonstrate the use and benefit of SPSE using example queries for identifying gene knockout targets of Trypanosoma cruzi for vaccine development. Answers to these queries involve looking up multiple sources of data, linking them together and presenting the results. Conclusion/Significance The SPSE facilitates parasitologists in leveraging the growing, but disparate, parasite data resources by offering an integrative platform that utilizes Semantic Web techniques, while keeping their workload increase minimal., Author Summary Effective research in parasite biology requires analyzing experimental lab data in the context of constantly expanding public data resources. Integrating lab data with public resources is particularly difficult for biologists who may not possess significant computational skills to acquire and process heterogeneous data stored at different locations. Therefore, we develop a semantic problem solving environment (SPSE) that allows parasitologists to query their lab data integrated with public resources using ontologies. An ontology specifies a common vocabulary and formal relationships among the terms that describe an organism, and experimental data and processes in this case. SPSE supports capturing and querying provenance information, which is metadata on the experimental processes and data recorded for reproducibility, and includes a visual query-processing tool to formulate complex queries without learning the query language syntax. We demonstrate the significance of SPSE in identifying gene knockout targets for T. cruzi. The overall goal of SPSE is to help researchers discover new or existing knowledge that is implicitly present in the data but not always easily detected. Results demonstrate improved usefulness of SPSE over existing lab systems and approaches, and support for complex query design that is otherwise difficult to achieve without the knowledge of query language syntax.

Background A critical aspect of the NIH Translational Research roadmap, which seeks to accelerate the delivery of "bench-side" discoveries to patient's "bedside," is the management of the provenance metadata that keeps track of the origin and history of data resources as they traverse the path from the bench to the bedside and back. A comprehensive provenance framework is essential for researchers to verify the quality of data, reproduce scientific results published in peer-reviewed literature, validate scientific process, and associate trust value with data and results. Traditional approaches to provenance management have focused on only partial sections of the translational research life cycle and they do not incorporate "domain semantics", which is essential to support domain-specific querying and analysis by scientists. Results We identify a common set of challenges in managing provenance information across the pre-publication and post-publication phases of data in the translational research lifecycle. We define the semantic provenance framework (SPF), underpinned by the Provenir upper-level provenance ontology, to address these challenges in the four stages of provenance metadata: (a) Provenance collection - during data generation (b) Provenance representation - to support interoperability, reasoning, and incorporate domain semantics (c) Provenance storage and propagation - to allow efficient storage and seamless propagation of provenance as the data is transferred across applications (d) Provenance query - to support queries with increasing complexity over large data size and also support knowledge discovery applications We apply the SPF to two exemplar translational research projects, namely the Semantic Problem Solving Environment for Trypanosoma cruzi (T.cruzi SPSE) and the Biomedical Knowledge Repository (BKR) project, to demonstrate its effectiveness. Conclusions The SPF provides a unified framework to effectively manage provenance of translational research data during pre and post-publication phases. This framework is underpinned by an upper-level provenance ontology called Provenir that is extended to create domain-specific provenance ontologies to facilitate provenance interoperability, seamless propagation of provenance, automated querying, and analysis.