Learn about the best environmental technologies for a sustainable development and how they are managed in various settings around the world. This course gives you an opportunity to learn about global trends that influence our environment and the living conditions and how different management systems and approaches that are used around the world to manage the environment. This includes current environmental technologies built for the environment and technologies for sustainable soil management, groundwater protection methods and integrated Water resources management.
Rural Environmental Technologies (Henrik Bregnhoj)
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來自 Technical University of Denmark (DTU) 的課程
Global Environmental Management
283 個評分
從本節課中
WEEK/MODULE 4: Technologies for the Built Environment
In week 4 we look at some of the current environmental technologies that are particularly effective in carrying out their purpose and in an environmental friendly way. We look at how we choose among different technologies and study storm water technologies, urban water supply and solid waste handling.
與講師見面
Henrik BregnhøjExt. Assoc. Prof.
Dept. Environmental Engineering
Steffen Foss HansenAssociate Professor
Department of Environmental Engineering
I'll tell you little bit of the environmental technologies for
rural areas.
And when I talk about rural areas.
You have to bear in mind that it's the more poor areas particularly
where people don't have, not everyone has connection to a water supply system,
in contrast to all the talk about urban conditions.
And then we have a lot of people who live in small towns and
big towns and all kinds of situations in between.
So see this as one end of the scale.
First thing is the water supply.
As I've said, a lot of people don't have connections to the water supply system.
The reason that we need the water supply is for having a better health.
We may talk about water quality, but also the quantity is very important.
For being able to wash hands and to have a proper hygiene.
But water supply also adds a lot of meaning to the ability of people to work,
because some women, particularly women and girls,
are using a lot of their time to fetch water when they don't have water inside.
So it's also giving people improved water supply.
It's also is something that improves their lives in many other ways.
When we choose which water supply to have,
we have to look at the sources, the available sources in that particular area.
And the first cheap solution is to look for some shallow groundwater,
that is water which is available when you dig into the ground some meters,
ten meters, 15 meters, and you find it.
You can take it up from an open well, a duct well.
And if you want to protect the water source quality more.
You can add a hand pump or you could just see, for example,
this rope and washer pump which is a very simple, and
easy to maintain solution from Central America.
You can also spring water if you live near the mountains.
It's a very good source in order to, be able to give water with the pressure,
so the water can be distributed to several taps or several households.
The next, but more expensive solution.
Is to the deeper groundwater, which you have to drill.
Can be done by hand, drilling equipment, but typically with a big machine.
So you take it up by hand pumps.
Or if you have more advance and possibilities, more money, more
organization, you can have a motorized pumps for example driven by solar panels.
Though it gives a lot of challenges also.
Another water source is the Rainwater, and this is a good water source but
only as a supplement.
Only for the rainy seasons, you can store water, but only for short period.
So it's in practice at water source that is used only for short period.
Only for the rainy season.
And then finally you have the surface water,
you have the rivers and ponds and so on.
Water from these are typically unless you are living in the mountains where it
may not be polluted.
Typically this type of water is very polluted.
And it has to be treated.
This is something that you usually don't do in villages,
or at least with great care, because it's difficult to maintain.
So what are the new technologies within these areas?
What I talked about is very traditional methods here.
One of the new things is the LIFELINK from the Danish company Grundfos.
It's a system where you pay for water with your mobile phone.
So you send an SMS to some place, and
then the machine will give you 20 liters of water.
This is a very important thing,
kind of an important consideration that people should pay for the water.
So having a robust system where people can actually pay,
is something that is quite important.
Another option is membrane filters to treat water.
Here we can also start to treat surface water.
And membranes are being developed this year to be more effective and more cheap.
One of the well known solutions is the LifeStraw, that is using membrane filters.
Where you can have a personal one where you just suck up the water or
you can have a family version.
The LifeStraw itself has maybe a limited scope as
a rural technology, but it is now mostly used in emergency situations.
Here's an example of what we call a submerged pond sand filter.
Which is built in concrete and it's just sand that filters the water
placed below the water level and then sucked up in a hand pump.
Very simple technology that is running without much maintenance.
And another example is for the situation where you have
groundwater with particular pollutants like arsenic or fluoride.
You can also treat that in a household ways and simple materials.
You can see the last two here is using materials that you can find in any
village, concrete, plastic, clay, pots.
And there's a lot of potential for these things that you can produce locally and
maintain and replace locally compared to the first
two I mentioned where the membrane fillers and the life link,
which is technology that requires more organization, more maintenance.
Another environmental aspect is the sanitation, and
sanitation we're talking about latrines and toilets.
The big issue here is to reduce diseases, to reduce water-related diseases,
and the big issue in many countries is to stop the open defecation.
Getting the feces away from the environment.
Some of the simple technologies is the pit latrine where
the feces is just dumped into a hole on the slab.
And it can be in a more advanced version with a chimney to remove the smell.
This is both in a squatting version or in a raised seat version.
That depends on the culture, what people are used to.
The more advanced is if you flush with water so you have a small water seal.
And you can have the pour flush methods for the squatters.
And you can have the raised dump.
And then you have the version where you reuse the nutrients from the feces.
We can talk about ecological sanitation where you fill one hole.
You let it stand for, a year and
then you can spread it on the fields without danger for disease spreading.
There are not much development within these types of latrines.
Plastic slabs are developed for, but that is mostly for emergency situation.
The house on top of the latrine is important for
people's wish to buy a latrine but not important for their health.
Here's an example where from where the people have built a very nice an durable
house from the local bricks that they have burning in the In th village.
And they also have built a slab just out of clay on top of some wooden planks.
Normally the slabs should be made of concrete so it's easy to clean.
The main purpose is to stop the open defecation.
And we're talking about getting people into the sanitation ladder.
And that is to move away from using open sanitation and using latrine.
And it's now generally accepted among practitioners to have simple latrines,
which is just a hole, but not with any particular constructed slab.
So something that costs nothing.
And then you can move up the ladder to different levels here.
There's not so much development in the technologies in sanitation for
the simple sanitation, like I talked about here.
The more important thing is to get people to want to have a latrine.
So that's a behavioral change thing.
The big development is how can you convince people to use it.
And it has been realized that talking about health improvement
is not in itself something that people care about.
They care more about the comfort, they care about the privacy,
the safety about using a latrine.
And one of the methods that is also prove very strong,
is the CLTS, the Community Let Total Sanitation.
And that is a place where you play on the people's-
disgust for feces you make sure that people they see how
disgusting it is to use open defecation so they want to build and
train it is very important and effective way to convince people.
School sanitation is also important so you-.
So children can get used to use sanitation.
And perhaps take the idea home to the home here.
You talk about sanitation marketing,
this is about setting up small production shops, workshops
in villages that produce the slabs and a simple measures for sanitation.
And in order to make this possible you may,
in a country, talk about making and enabling environment so
it is getting attractive for people to set up these shops and
getting, making it possible for people to learn the techniques here.
At last, I could mention the storm water situation that is also prominent,
and when we talk about cities.
Of course many of abilities are also placed on low planes where you can half
lots, and the solution here is to also have proper drainage.
And if you are in an area close to the sea.
And you see sea level rise, you have need embankments to take care of this.
And for example, with the embankment it's also very
important that you maintain the embankment.
Here's a picture where you can see the embankment in West Bengal in India.
Where, which is maintained.
So you can easily see that it is important to keep it intact or
to use more durable materials on top of the embankment.
And with that comes a lot of-.
Again changing behavior of the people to maintain their facilities.
