Staff

Abishek S Narayan

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Dr. Abishek S Narayan

(Dr. Sc. ETH) Project Manager / Researcher

Department Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development

About Me

My research is on water and sanitation for development. I work in the intersection of Engineering, Planning and Policy. Currently, I focus on few major topics:


1. Integrating Basic Services (WABES)

Water, Sanitation and Solid Waste are inherently similar and have many interactions between their physical value chains. Integrating these offer a possibility to reap co-benefits. In two small towns in Uganda, we are testing if and how this could be done. This work is done with the support of SDC.


2. Decentralised Wastewater Treatment and Reuse (WaterReuseLab)

There is a paradigm shift in the WASH sector towards decentralisation and resource recovery. Over the last five years, I have explored off-grid and semi-grid water and sanitation systems from a technical and social perspective. In this new project, we are researching the governance of water reuse in Bangalore, India. This research is in collaboration with WELL Labs. 


3. Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS)

This research contributes to the conceptualisation of CWIS and the development of a planning approach to implement it. I collaborate with the many partners including World Bank, Gates Foundation, Asian Development Bank, and GIZ among others.



4. Scaling up WASH innovations (Lab to Land)

A number of technological innovations in the WASH sector already exist, but have failed to scale up and solve real world challenges. I ask: What should we do to bring such innovations from lab to the land. This research is done in collaboration with TU Munich.   


5. Climate Resilient Sanitation 

The link between sanitation and climate for mitigation and adaptation are clearly established. I am exploring resilience to urban water and sanitation from a planning perspective through a variety of collaborations.  


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My interest in water came from founding the Clean Adyar Initative, a citizen action group on river restoration in Chennai, India. There I understood the need for taking a holistic approach to water challenges. 

I have a background in Chemical Engineering and Environmental Policy from Anna and Oxford Universities respectively. I received my PhD in Envrionmental Engineering from ETH Zurich.

I am also a visiting / guest lecturer on the topics of Water, Sanitation and Urbanization at EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich,  IHE Delft, TU Berlin, TU Munich and University of Oxford.


I am active in four key WASH networks -
Swiss Water Partnership, where I co-founded the SWP Youth network and help coordinate the youth activities. I was also part of the Steering Board of the Partnership.
Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA), where I am a lead for the working group on Cities, and also on the Advisory Board of the Alliance. 
International Water Association (IWA), where I am part of the Task Force of their Inclusive Urban Sanitation / CWIS initiative. 
OneWater (previously Water Science Policy), where I am part of their Advisory Board and support them in strategy and partnerships. 

I believe that for achieving sustainable and equitable development in WASH and elsewhere, there needs to be holistic planning that combines technological and social aspects.  It is therefore with this approach that I try to move in any of my scientific or development endeavor. 

Finally I am also strong advocate for (1) youth empowerment and (2) science communication. Therefore, I strive to contribute for both whenever opportunities arise through mentoring, public talks and more. 

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Projects

4S is assessing small-scale sanitation systems in South Asia to provide policy recommendations for improved sanitation system design, implementation and O&M.

4S: Small-Scale Sanitation Scaling-Up
WABES explores opportunities for integrated planning, implementation and sustainability of water, solid waste and fecal sludge service provision in urban settings.

WABES
The aim of CWIS research is to develop a method that synthesizes existing information about the sanitation landscapes of cities in India and that presents comprehensive sanitation solutions.

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS)
WaterReuseLab aims at analyzing how a new generation of decentralized water reuse systems could be developed in Bengaluru, India

WaterReuseLab Bengaluru

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Curriculum Vitae

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Publications

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A portfolio approach to achieving universal sanitation

Sanitation could evolve beyond its traditional focus on public health and environmental protection to address broader challenges. A portfolio approach is proposed, integrating diverse systems at various scales to optimize benefits including economic value, resource efficiency, climate resilience and human dignity.
Sankara Narayan, A.; Dorea, C.; Willetts, J.; Friedman, L.; Kalbar, P.; Chandran, K. (2024) A portfolio approach to achieving universal sanitation, Nature Water, 2(11), 1044-1047, doi:10.1038/s44221-024-00336-0, Institutional Repository

Exploring the barriers to scaling up sanitation enterprises using Q-methodology

Despite decades of effort, progress in safely managed sanitation─a public sector mandate─is stalling due to limited public funding and poor governance, among other reasons. As a result, public health has suffered and environmental degradation has continued. Social enterprises that use innovative business models to provide on-site sanitation services, also known as sanitation enterprises, are considered an emerging solution. However, sanitation enterprises have not yet successfully replaced public provision at scale. This work explores the barriers that sanitation enterprises encounter in lower- and middle-income countries. Q-Method, a mixed-methods approach that assesses social perspectives on an issue, is used to evaluate major barriers and groups of dominant perception for 19 sanitation enterprises operating across 20 countries. A total of 25 mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive barriers are identified, ranging from affording capital expenses to navigating political corruption. The results show that most of the identified barriers fall into the financial barrier category, with reaching economies of scale being the greatest obstacle for sanitation enterprises. On the basis of these results, the premise of independent profitability underlying the sanitation enterprise value proposition should be reevaluated. Four enterprise types are proposed and can explain half of the variance among the sanitation enterprises studied. The context of a sanitation enterprise, including its countries of operation, size, customer base, sources of revenue, and section of the sanitation value chain, influences the barriers that the enterprise encounters. This research underscores the crucial role of context in influencing barriers for sanitation enterprises, emphasizing the need for investment and for policy makers to take these contextual dimensions into account.
Wallock, W.; Narayan, A. S.; Thomson, P. (2024) Exploring the barriers to scaling up sanitation enterprises using Q-methodology, ACS ES&T Water, 4(9), 3986-3995, doi:10.1021/acsestwater.4c00274, Institutional Repository
Narayan, A. S.; Hashimoto, K.; Parekhelashvili, N.; Duremdes, S. C. (2024) Citywide inclusive sanitation: aligning investments with the global sanitation and wastewater goals, 16 p, doi:10.56506/CRRI4938, Institutional Repository

Citywide inclusive sanitation: reviewing the state of the art

Urban sanitation is a basic service essential for public and environmental health. Incorporating various advances over the past two decades, the urban sanitation agenda has evolved towards the paradigm shift of Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS). Overall, CWIS aims at providing equitable and sustainable sanitation services and is closely linked to Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 6 on clean water and sanitation and directly and indirectly benefits several other SDGs. Since its inception in 2016, CWIS has evolved through various research and implementation experiences, resulting in four conceptual frameworks that redefine sanitation as a service delivery process, emphasizing the entire sanitation value chain and the coexistence of sewered and non-sewered technologies. This discussion paper draws on 77 journal articles and grey literature explicitly linked to CWIS, reviews the state of the art on the topic by comparing the four prominent CWIS frameworks and by identifying key advances, current gaps, and emerging issues to inform ways forward towards a more unified CWIS framework.
Schelbert, V.; Narayan, A. (2024) Citywide inclusive sanitation: reviewing the state of the art, 43 p, doi:10.2166/9781789064964, Institutional Repository
Narayan, A. S.; Boller, M. (2023) To integrate or not to integrate? Water and waste as unified basic services, PLoS Water, 2(9), e0000180 (4 pp.), doi:10.1371/journal.pwat.0000180, Institutional Repository

The clean plan: analysing sanitation planning in India using the CWIS planning framework

Sanitation in India has received national attention for over a decade, especially with the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) making it a political priority. However, due to the lack of appropriate sanitation planning practices, there have been little long-term gains made in urban sanitation beyond the ending of open defaecation. In this paper, we analyse the key barriers to sanitation planning, in India, in the context of the emerging paradigm of Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS). A mixed method approach of shit flow diagrams, social network analysis, policy analysis, interviews and workshops at the national, state (2) and city (4) levels was conducted. Eight factors were identified as important barriers for planning including inadequate planning capacities, lack of ownership of city sanitation plans among city governments, poor community involvement, absence of a uniform planning framework, unreliable political and financial support, overlapping jurisdictions, and scheme-based funding. The paper also proposes the CWIS Planning Framework which offers a perspective at overcoming these barriers with the recommendation of bridging top-down and bottom-up planning approaches. While there is increasingly more clarity on what CWIS means, there is little understanding on how to plan for it. Therefore, this framework provides the theoretical basis for planning with the CWIS approach.
Narayan, A. S.; Maurer, M.; Lüthi, C. (2021) The clean plan: analysing sanitation planning in India using the CWIS planning framework, Journal of Water Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 11(6), 1036-1047, doi:10.2166/washdev.2021.130, Institutional Repository

Advancements in and integration of water, sanitation, and solid waste for low- and middle-income countries

The water, sanitation, and solid waste sectors are closely related and have many interactions between their respective service chains in low-and middle-income countries. Currently, these interactions mostly lead to cross-contamination, and opportunities for co-benefits are seldom realized. This review presents the key advancements within each of these three development sectors in the past two decades. We identify numerous similarities such as decentralization, resource recovery, community involved planning, and digitalization. Despite the potential for synergies and the opportunities to maximize positive interactions, there have been few attempts to break the existing sectoral silos in order to integrate these three service chains. We argue that, with the right enabling environment, an integrated approach to holistically planning and implementing water supply, sanitation, and solid waste management can create positive interactions resulting in co-benefits among complementary development goals.
Narayan, A. S.; Marks, S. J.; Meierhofer, R.; Strande, L.; Tilley, E.; Zurbrügg, C.; Lüthi, C. (2021) Advancements in and integration of water, sanitation, and solid waste for low- and middle-income countries, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46, 193-219, doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-030620-042304, Institutional Repository

Social network analysis for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH): application in governance of decentralized wastewater treatment in India using a novel validation methodology

Social network analysis (SNA) is a versatile and increasingly popular methodological tool to understand structures of relationships between actors involved in governance situations. Given the complexity of the set of stakeholders involved in the governance of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and the diversity of their interests, this article proposes SNA to the WASH sector. The use of SNA as an appropriate diagnostic tool for planning Citywide Inclusive Sanitation is explored. Missing data is a major problem for SNA in the studies of governance situations, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Therefore, a novel validation methodology for incomplete SNA data, relying on information from internal and external experts is proposed. SNA and the validation method is then applied to study the governance of decentralized wastewater treatment in four cities of India. The results corroborate key differences between mega and secondary cities in terms of institutions, community engagement and overall sanitation situation including aspects of decentralized wastewater treatment plants, based on the city types.
Narayan, A. S.; Fischer, M.; Lüthi, C. (2020) Social network analysis for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH): application in governance of decentralized wastewater treatment in India using a novel validation methodology, Frontiers in Environmental Science, 7, 198 (18 pp.), doi:10.3389/fenvs.2019.00198, Institutional Repository

A sanitation journey. Principles, approaches & tools for urban sanitation

Although the number of urban dwellers in the Global South with access to improved sanitation increased significantly over the last three decades, progress has been outpaced by rapid urban growth. The number of people in urban areas lacking improved sanitation has steadily increased and today over 1.8 billion urban dwellers do not use safely managed services. Progress has not only been slow, but also uneven between different segments of the population. The focus of ministries, urban authorities and financing agencies has been mostly on incremental expansion of sewers, benefitting non-poor segments of the population, and in most places, utilities have failed to provide citywide services mainly because they have stayed within the sewer paradigm. [...]
Schertenleib, R.; Lüthi, C.; Panesar, A.; Büürma, M.; Kapur, D.; Sankara Narayan, A.; Pres, A.; Salian, P.; Spuhler, D.; Tempel, A. (2021) A sanitation journey. Principles, approaches & tools for urban sanitation, 79 p, Institutional Repository

Solving urban sanitation - sustainably and equitably

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) is gaining traction as an integrated approach that can achieve multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Abishek S. Narayan and Christoph Lüthi at the Department of Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development (Sandec) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) in Zurich, Switzerland, explain the concept and its implementation through current projects.
Narayan, A. S.; Lüthi, C. (2020) Solving urban sanitation - sustainably and equitably, World Water, 43(4), 18-21, Institutional Repository
Lüthi, C.; Sankara Narayan, A. (2018) Citywide inclusive sanitation: achieving the urban water SDGs, In: Camarena, L.; Machado-Filho, H.; Casagrande, L.; Byrd, R.; Tsakanika, A.; Wotton, S. (Eds.), Urban waters - How does water impact and is impacted by cities and human settlements?, 11-13, Institutional Repository

Technology, implementation and operation of small‐scale sanitation in India. Performance analysis and policy recommendations. Small‐scale sanitation scaling‐up (4S) - project report vol. I

Introduction – In addition to underground drainage and large‐scale sewage treatment plants (STPs) and the management of faecal sludge and septage from non‐sewered on‐site systems, small‐scale sanitation (SSS) systems are becoming increasingly important. Such systems consist of small‐scale sewerage networks and STPs, allowing for incremental, modular and flexible implementation. Therefore, they have significant potential for cost‐effective local wastewater treatment and reuse. In order to improve public health, relieve water stress and protect the environment in urban India, SSS systems have a key role to play.
Since a policy drive for small sewage treatment plants (SSTPs) in India beginning in 2006, there has been a remarkable growth in the number of installations in the country’s rapidly expanding urban areas, especially in big cities. However, it is known that many of the existing systems are underperforming or have failed for various reasons.
Thus far, SSS sector developments in India have not been informed by a systematic assessment of lessons learned, and there has been very little research on the enabling conditions and implications for the successful long‐term operation and management of SSS systems at scale. The main goal of the "Technology, Implementation and Operation" component of the 4S Project is to evaluate present experience with SSS systems and to develop evidence‐based policy recommendations for their successful design, implementation, operation and maintenance at scale.
Klinger, M.; Ulrich, L.; Ramprasad, C.; Wolf, A. T.; Reynaud, N.; Narayan, A. S.; Siemsen, P.; Lüthi, C.; Philip, L. (2020) Technology, implementation and operation of small‐scale sanitation in India. Performance analysis and policy recommendations. Small‐scale sanitation scaling‐up (4S) - project report vol. I, 127 p, Institutional Repository
Johnstone, D. W. M.; Nowicki, S.; Narayan, A. S.; Sinha, R. (2020) Wastewater. From a toxin to a valuable resource, In: Dadson, S. J.; Garrick, D. E.; Penning‐Rowsell, E. C.; Hall, J. W.; Hope, R.; Hughes, J. (Eds.), Water science, policy, and management: a global challenge, 291-307, doi:10.1002/9781119520627.ch16, Institutional Repository

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Address

E-Mail: abishek.narayan@eawag.ch
Phone: +41 58 765 6771
Fax: +41 58 765 5802
Address: Eawag
Überlandstrasse 133
8600 Dübendorf
Office: FC F36
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