Nearly half the population of Madagascar lives in severe poverty. The country is particularly poor in sanitation data and ranks 166th globally for water and sanitation indicators.1 For example, in the capital city of Antananarivo, where two thirds of people live in informal settlements, none of the waste is effectively treated and only a small area has sewers.
Madagascar suffers from a lack of standardized sanitation geospatial data, as well as a lack of standards for sharing this data between organizations and government. With poor infrastructure and limited government capacity at local levels, collecting and verifying relevant sanitation data has long been a challenge.
To address these gaps, the Data Innovation Fund project, “Assessing the Accessibility of Urban Sanitation Data in Antananarivo, Madagascar”, focused on conducting research and reviewing possible methods for mobilizing, analyzing, and visualizing geospatial data on urban sanitation in Antananarivo. The project’s work program, led by Gather Hub Ltd., included curating and assessing publicly available sanitation data from open sources to identify the sanitation data gap, creating a work plan for the standardization of sanitation, and conducting geospatial analysis on available sanitation data to create visualizations to inform decision-makers.
In addition to conducting geospatial analysis, Gather also designed a prototype sanitation data platform to host geospatial visualizations of the insights generated by a new sanitation risk index. The team engaged with local stakeholders to refine the project outputs and agree on a path forward to further test, refine, and implement the data standard, sanitation risk index, and sanitation data platform.
Relevant Sustainable Development Goals include: 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).
Sanitation Risk Index Recommendations
Disclaimer: As many of the links are external, some links may not work.