Research for the Humanitarian Futures Programme: water quality

Research consultant: Dr Karen Hudson-Edwards, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

The Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) is a humanitarian catalyst that challenges people to think differently and challenge the orthodox. It has three main components, designed to develop the capacities of organisations to prepare for the future:

• futures issues
• partner development
• tool development dealing with humanitarian issues such as emergencies, disasters and catastrophes

HFP contracted Dr Hudson-Edwards to conduct a literature review on water quality in urban areas for the HFP’s Crisis Drivers Analysis project. This project concerns the future of water and sanitation stress in urban slums and how such stress is likely to exacerbate other humanitarian crises over time, its purpose being to explore the interlinkages between different crisis variables from a futures perspective (i.e. how current trends may evolve to producing surprising new outcomes).