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Estimating Safely Managed Sanitation in Urban Areas; Lessons Learned From a Global Implementation of Excreta-Flow Diagrams

Overview of attention for article published in Frontiers in Environmental Science, January 2020
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (95th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (99th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
4 news outlets
twitter
23 X users
wikipedia
1 Wikipedia page

Citations

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63 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
149 Mendeley
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Title
Estimating Safely Managed Sanitation in Urban Areas; Lessons Learned From a Global Implementation of Excreta-Flow Diagrams
Published in
Frontiers in Environmental Science, January 2020
DOI 10.3389/fenvs.2020.00001
Authors

Andy Peal, Barbara Evans, Sangaralingam Ahilan, Radu Ban, Isabel Blackett, Peter Hawkins, Lars Schoebitz, Rebecca Scott, Andy Sleigh, Linda Strande, Oscar Veses

Abstract

The urban population will rise to 6.7 billion by 2050. The United Nations has committed to provide everyone with safely managed sanitation, but there is limited understanding of the scale of the challenge. This paper describes a methodology for rapid assessment of sanitation in cities including a graphical representation (a shit-flow diagram or SFD) and reports on findings from implementation in 39 cities. The SFD provides high level information for planning purposes covering the entire sanitation system in a city. More than half of the human excreta produced in these cities is not safely managed. The most significant portions of the unsafely managed excreta are: (i) contents of pits and tanks which are not emptied and are overflowing, leaking, or discharging to the surrounding environment (14%); (ii) contents of pits and tanks which are emptied but not delivered to treatment (18%); (iii) fecal sludge and supernatant delivered to treatment but not treated (3%); (iv) wastewater in sewers not delivered to treatment (14%); and (v) wastewater delivered to treatment but not treated (6%). Many cities currently relying on onsite sanitation for safe storage, particularly in Africa, will need new strategies as populations grow. Containment systems that discharge to open drains are common in some Asian cities; these pose a public health risk. Dumping of excreta is widespread and there is a lack of realistic performance data on which estimates of the extent and effectiveness of treatment can be made. The SFD production process can be challenging due to a lack of data and low technical capacity in cities. There is often uncertainty over terminology and over the status of infrastructure. Formalizing definitions for the SFD preparation process was found to be useful in overcoming capacity constraints in cities. The SFD produces a credible snapshot of the sanitation situation in a city. The paper provides evidence of the urgent need for improved management and monitoring of urban sanitation in cities around the world and highlights the role of the SFD as a planning tool.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 23 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 149 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 149 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 28 19%
Student > Ph. D. Student 15 10%
Researcher 12 8%
Student > Doctoral Student 7 5%
Student > Bachelor 6 4%
Other 18 12%
Unknown 63 42%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Engineering 30 20%
Environmental Science 28 19%
Social Sciences 5 3%
Unspecified 4 3%
Immunology and Microbiology 3 2%
Other 14 9%
Unknown 65 44%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 51. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 August 2021.
All research outputs
#793,976
of 24,673,288 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Environmental Science
#69
of 4,366 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#19,875
of 462,184 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Environmental Science
#1
of 39 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,673,288 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,366 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 462,184 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 39 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.