SanMap.org hosts data to help small scale private sanitation businesses build business plans, choose appropriate technologies and deliver quality sanitation services to low income urban areas.

Providing adequate sanitation in unplanned urban settlements is a task full of challenges. Two of the main challenges are a lack of pit emptying services and a lack of adequate latrine designs suitable for the urban context.

This site is designed to provide data to support the private sector to provide these services.

The success of these new approaches will be decided, by the viability of the business models. As with any business, success will be dependent on ability of the operators to identify potential customers, target their products at the right audience and understand the differing challenges being faced by customers.

Currently, a lack of easy access to information makes this kind of targeting impossible. This project aims to map specific criteria which impact on the appropriate choice of technology and customer identification. We aim to make this freely available in user friendly formats.

The data on this site has been collected by Water for People, apart from the Dar es Salaam data, which was supplied by WaterAid.

The methodology for the data collection has been designed to be quick and simple to undertake, without the need for advanced GIS skills or expensive software.

Large scale maps of urban areas are produced from using satellite imagery from Google Earth. These maps are usually size A1 or A2 and are laminated.

Enumerators then take the maps and use them to conduct interviews with key informants, often civil servants working for the local government who are familiar with the areas to be mapped. The key informants indicate the relevant areas on the maps with white board markers and a digital photograph is taken of the map. The enumerator then cleans the map and the next indicator is drawn on the map. This process is repeated until all the information layers have been recorded on the camera.

The photographs are then used to create the information layers that you see on this site.

For more information on the methodology or for training materials please email us.

The data on this site has been collected by Water for People, apart from the Dar es Salaam data, which was supplied by WaterAid.

The data on this site was collected to aid small scale private sanitation businesses build business plans, choose appropriate technologies and deliver quality sanitation services to low income urban areas.

We recognise that this data could also be useful for municipal and city councils for town planning, for researchers and health workers and for a variety of other purposes. Users are free to access the data on this site and use it for whatever purposes they see fit.

We are interested to see what other uses people come up with for this data. So, if you do download and use this data please drop us an email (admin@sanmap.org) to let us know what you're doing with it.

The files for each city can be downloaded below.

Disclaimer: All data on this site is purely indicative and no guarantee of accuracy is given or implied. We are not responsible for any consequences of use of this data in any way whatsoever. All uses of images which are copyrighted to Google, Google maps or their content providers must follow the terms of use. (Terms of Use)