Prof. Richard Taylor, Hydrology University College London
Adjunct Professor of Hydrogeology at Makerere University, Uganda
On-site water supply and sanitation systems play a vital role in the pursuit of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 (water and sanitation for all) in many rural and low-income urban communities globally. Sustaining this conjunctive use of the subsurface for water supplies (e.g. shallow wells, springs) and sanitation (e.g. pit latrines, septic tanks) is especially challenging under conditions of rapid urbanization taking place in many African cities. High-frequency monitoring of groundwater quality reveals, in places, episodic faecal contamination in association of heavy rain events (>10 mm/day). What are key factors that determine the vulnerability of on-site water and sanitation facilities to contamination? What pathways does the rapid transmission of faecal pathogens to groundwater trace? To what extent might climate change exacerbate the risk of contamination to untreated, on-site water supplies? This seminar will interrogate these questions and explore not only the implications of these observations for how we measure access to safe water and sanitation, but also the potential of a new instant method for monitoring faecal contamination of water supplies based on fluorescence.
Start Time: Mar 3, 2022 01:55 PM
Meeting Recording Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/socqZD8NilXwZMEanFHlXxZdm_uVz-hQNQxis9jL7IiddMLQuXGtnPg9UfI0XN_H.XDoDtMQ02qyxTjqw
