Agent-based modelling of urban sanitation: informal settlements in Nairobi
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Date
2006
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Abstract
During the last two decades, Nairobi in Kenya has experienced a rapid increase in its urban
population. With the number of houses failing to match the increase in urban population, a
number of informal settlements (slums) have mushroomed. As the population of these areas
continues to increase, the inability of the local authorities to provide basic sanitation services
for the urban dwellers is becoming a serious problem. The unprocessed soil water being
discarded into the environment is not only adversely affecting the ecosystem; it is also
creating unhygienic conditions that are conducive for the transmission of diseases in the
densely populated informal settlements. A number of community-based organisations
(CBOs) have undertaken various initiatives to mitigate against such problems. These
organizations operate largely independently and there is no evidence of an evaluation being
undertaken across the board to model the social, economical and environmental impact of the
existing sanitation initiatives. This paper describes a proposed agent-based model that is
aimed at doing just that. The proposed system will increase the comparative efficacy in the
selected domain by modeling the values and incentives for the different organisations in
various scenarios.
Description
Keywords
Simulation, Sanitation, Impact assessment, CBOs
Citation
Joint International Conference on Computing and Decision Making in Civil and Building Engineering June 14-16, 2006 - Montréal, Canada