Making Sanitation Count: Developing and Testing a Device for Assessing Latrine Use in Low-Income Settings

Abstract

While efforts are underway to expand latrine coverage to an estimated 2.6 billion people who lack access to improved sanitation, there is evidence that actual use of latrines is suboptimal, limiting the potential health and environmental gains from containment of human excreta. We developed a passive latrine use monitor (PLUM) and compared its ability to measure latrine activity with structured observation. Each PLUM consisted of a passive infrared motion detector, microcontroller, data storage card, and batteries mounted in a small plastic housing that was positioned inside the latrine. During a field trial in Orissa, India, with ∼115 households, the number of latrine events measured by the PLUMs was in good agreement with that measured by trained observers during 5 h of structured observation per device per week. A significant finding was that the presence of a human observer was associated with a statistically significant increase in the number of latrine events, i.e., the users modified their behavior in response to the observer. Another advantage of the PLUM was the ability to measure activity continuously for an entire week. A shortcoming of the PLUM was the inability to separate latrine events that occurred in immediate succession, leading to possible undercounting during high-traffic periods. The PLUM is a promising technology that can provide detailed measures of latrine use to improve the understanding of sanitation behaviors and how to modify them and for assessing the intended health, livelihood, and environmental benefits of improved sanitation.

Sustainable sanitation, improved use of composting latrines through mixing and moisturizing: case study in Paraguay

“…There are issues related to the use (Clasen et al 2012), acceptance (Nayono et al 2010), and diffusion (Jenkins and Cairncross 2010) of latrines in developing countries, influence of latrines on water quality in sandy aquifers (Knappett et al 2012), degree of improvement realized (Exley et al 2015), methane (Reid et al 2014), and volatile compound (Lin et al 2013) emissions, microbial fuel cells for latrines (Castro et al 2014), and the spread of fecal matter from latrine floors (Pickering et al 2012) that are also important, but beyond the scope of this work.…”

Remotely Accessible Instrumented Monitoring of Global Development Programs: Technology Development and Validation

“…Additionally the use of the smartphone application for the structured observation allowed for automatic logging of the date and time. This is important as manually recording time can lead to discrete data [4] that will not perfectly correlate to sensor data. Structured observation and sensor data were aggregated by R polling the DoForms and MySQL databases, and correlated based on the barcode of the sensor observed and the timestamps of each observed event and each sensor-detected event.…”

“…More recently, a study conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used structured observations to validate data. By using a motion detector to track latrine use, they determined that structured observations highly influenced user behavior [4]. Additionally, it is known that the act of surveying can itself impact later behavior [5].…”

“…Several other organizations are contributing to this initiative, including work conducted at the University of California at Berkeley and the associated Berkeley Air Monitoring Group on indoor air pollution instrumentation including a particle monitor [10], a stove temperature sensor [11], a hand-pump motion monitor with remote reporting developed at the University of Oxford [12], and a passive latrine use monitor for sanitation studies developed by the University of California at Berkeley and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine [4].…”

The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer on Toilet Use in eThekwini, South Africa

“…Still, access does not necessarily imply use, and even if use begins high, it often declines rapidly over time, especially once the daily burden of cleaning and maintenance become evident [24][25][26][27]. After decades of counting toilets, advanced methods to by-pass unreliable stated use measurements or invasive observations are now only in development [28].…”