Understanding the costs of urban sanitation: towards a standard costing model

There is a dearth of reliable cost data for urban sanitation. In the absence of high-quality global data, the full cost of sustainable implementation of urban sanitation remains uncertain. This paper proposes an approach for developing bespoke parametric cost estimation models for easy and reliable estimation of the costs of alternative sanitation technologies in a range of geographical contexts. A key requirement for the development of these models is the establishment of a large database of empirical information on the current costs of sanitation systems. Such a database does not currently exist. Two foundational tools are proposed. Firstly, a standard metric for reporting the costs of urban sanitation systems, total annualised cost per household. Secondly, a standardised approach to the collection of empirical cost data, the Novel Ball-Park Reporting Approach (NBPRA). Data from the NBPRA are presented for 87 individual sanitation components from 25 cities in 10 countries. Broad cost ranges for different archetypal systems have been estimated; these currently have high levels of uncertainty. Further work is proposed to collect additional data, build up the global database, and develop parametric cost estimation models with higher reliability.