Climate Change Impacts on Urban Sanitation: A Systematic Review and Failure Mode Analysis

Climate change will stress urban sanitation systems. Although urban sanitation uses various infrastructure types andservice systems, current research appears skewed toward a smallsubset of cases. We conducted a systematic literature review tocritically appraise the evidence for climate change impacts on allurban sanitation system types. We included road-based transportnetworks, an essential part of fecal sludge management systems.We combined the evidence on climate change impacts with theexisting knowledge about modes of urban sanitation failures. Wefound a predominance of studies that assess climate impacts oncentralized sewerage in high-income contexts. The implications ofclimate change for urban nonsewered and complex, fragmented,and (partially) decentralized sanitation systems remain under-researched. In addition, the understanding of the impacts of climate change on urban sanitation systems fails to take acomprehensive citywide perspective considering interdependencies with other sectors and combinations of climate effects. Weconclude that the evidence for climate change impacts on urban sanitation systems is weak. To date, research neither adequatelyrepresents the variety of urban sanitation infrastructure and service systems nor reflects the operational and management challenges of already stressed systems

Automated summary

Existing research on the impact of climate change on urban sanitation systems is limited and predominantly focuses on the effects on centralized sewerage systems in high-income contexts. Research on the impacts on nonsewered, complex, fragmented, and decentralized sanitation systems is lacking, as well as considering the interdependencies with other sectors and combinations of climate effects.