AFFORDABLE, RESILIENT AND SUSTAINABLE SANITATION SYSTEMS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES is the guiding theme of the research cooperation between Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz and Technischen Universität Kaiserslautern.

Project duration: 05/2021 - 04/2023

Sanitation systems are vital urban infrastructures that directly influence the public economy, health, and welfare. In most parts of the world, these systems rely heavily on centralized networks of pipes and centralized WWTPs that have left behind many degrading long-term environmental effects. However, in developing countries like Iran, where such centralized systems do not exist, there is an opportunity to 'leapfrog' that centralized step to more cost-effective, resilient and sustainable systems by coupling novel decentralized approaches and technologies (e.g. on-site treatment, source-separated sanitation systems, and constructed wetlands) to conventional wastewater infrastructures. Leapfrogging theory proposes that developing countries may be able to skip older versions of technology and avoid developed countries’ path to industrialization with its environmentally degrading legacy. The planned cooperation is based on this idea.