Water and Sanitation Infrastructure in Developing Countries
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate-level course on planning water and sanitation systems for developing countries. It covers principles of infrastructure planning with an emphasis on appropriate and sustainable technologies, weighing technical, socio-cultural, public health, and economic factors together rather than treating engineering as a standalone problem. Students work toward designing simple, reliable water supply and sanitation systems compatible with local customs and available human and material resources. The subject was jointly developed by Earthea Nance and Susan Murcott and is aimed at graduate and upper-division students from any department interested in grassroots international development. Materials include the course's readings, assignments, and design exercises as published through MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative, free to access with no certificate offered. The interdisciplinary framing draws on urban studies, planning, and civil and environmental engineering.