Research publications

Briefing notes

These papers explain the concepts behind the WASHCost project, including life-cycle costing and all the cost components. Briefing notes are internally and externally peer-reviewed.

• Briefing Note 1 - (em Português) Abordagem dos Custos do Ciclo de Vida
• Briefing Note 1a - Life-cycle costs approach: costing sustainable services
• Briefing Note 1b - Services are forever: The importance of capital maintenance in ensuring sustainable WASH services
• Briefing Note 1b - (en Français) Pour des services pérennes: Le rôle crucial des dépenses de renouvellement et de réhabilitation pour assurer d...
• Briefing Note 1b - (em Português) Serviços para sempre: A importância da Manutenção do Capital (CapManEx) na garantia de serviços sustentávei...
• Briefing Note 1c - The cost of capital: Costs of financing capital expenditure for water and sanitation
• Briefing Note 2 - Decentralisation and the use of cost data in WASHCost project countries
• Briefing Note 3 - Applying the life-cycle costs approach to sanitation

Working papers

These are mainly research papers that explain the current findings and application of the life-cycle cost approach. Working papers might be updated and are always internally and externally peer-reviewed.

• Working Paper 1 - WASHCost's theory of change
• Working Paper 2 - Ladders for assessing and costing water service delivery
• Working Paper 2 - (en Français) Echelle d’évaluation du coût et de la qualité des services d’eau potable
• Working Paper 3 - Assessing sanitation service levels
• Working Paper 3 - (en Français) L’évaluation des niveaux de service d’assainissement
• Working Paper 3 - (em Português) Avaliando os níveis dos serviços de saneamento
• Working Paper 3 - 2nd ed. (en Français) L’évaluation des niveaux de service d’assainissement
• Working Paper 4 - Cost-based decision support tools for water and sanitation
• Working Paper 5 - Arrangements and cost of providing support to rural water service providers
• Working paper 6 - Assessing hygiene cost-effectiveness
• …

Occasional papers

 Here, you can find the latest of series reports by WASHCost (and IRC and partners) expressing views on topical issues relating to costing of WASH services.

• Occasional Paper 46 - Life-cycle costs of rainwater harvesting systems

Documenting the WASHCost story

Reports from several team and research meetings are made available here. The reports document the process and progress towards developing key concepts, data collection, and analysis within the WASHCost team.

• WASHCost Team meeting (6-10 June 2011, The Hague, The Netherlands)
• WASHCost Research meeting: Standardising data crunching (22-26 February 2011, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso)
• Annual planning (9-12 November 2010, The Hague, The Netherlands)
• WASHCost Data organisation and coding protocol (June 2010, The Netherlands)
• WASHCost Research Meeting (14-18 June 2010, Kumasi, Ghana)
• WASHCost Research Meeting: Progress, process and plans (2-7 November 2009, Maputo, Mozambique)
• WASHCost Research meeting: Methods and tools (8-12 June 2009, Hyderabad, India)
• WASHCost Research meeting report (16-20 February 2009, Accra, Ghana)
• WASHCost End of inception phase meeting report (6-10 October 2008, The Hague, The Netherlands)
• Report methods and tools part 1 (16-20 June 2008, Delft, The Netherlands)
• …

IRC Symposium 2010 papers

All WASHCost-related papers delivered at IRC's 'Pumps, Pipes and Promises' symposium 2010 are made available here.

Papers on other themes can be found on the IRC Symposium 2010 page. 

• Costing WASH services
• Costing in Latin America
• Costing in Africa
• Costing in Asia