Title: Risk-based sequential allocation of competing sanitation infrastructure investments

Authors: Garrick E. Louis; Luna M. Magpili; C. Ariel Pinto

Addresses: Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400747, 151 Engineer's Way, Charlottesville, VA 22904, Virginia, USA ' Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400747, 151 Engineer's Way, Charlottesville, VA 22904, Virginia, USA ' Old Dominion University, Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Kaufman Hall, Rm. 241, Norfolk, 23529-0236 Virginia, USA

Abstract: Given severe sanitation service shortages, infrastructure interdependencies and extreme scarcity of funding that prevail in many developing countries, the allocation of funds across the three services of providing drinking water, wastewater and sewage and solid waste is vital to their sustained expansion. This paper adopts an approach to resource allocation for the three services based on the triplet of questions found in risk management regarding what options are available, their associated trade-offs, and their impacts on future options. An example shows an application to a multistage sequential allocation of investments to sanitation infrastructure representative of a scenario in developing countries.

Keywords: risk management; decision making; resource allocation; sequential allocation; sanitation infrastructure; infrastructure investment; drinking water; wastewater; sewage; solid waste; developing countries; waste management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEWM.2012.048374

International Journal of Environment and Waste Management, 2012 Vol.10 No.2/3, pp.256 - 268

Published online: 13 Dec 2014 *

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