WaSH Sector Assessment Platform Simplified Report for 2022 Assessment

Kevin Bonel, Mahdi Wehbi

Background

The WASH Assessment Platform (WAP) was developed by Water sector partners in 2017 as a centralized digital dashboard to respond to nationwide WASH vulnerability in ISs in relation with real-time data from all WaSH agencies in Lebanon. This platform aims to highlight the key areas of WASH related intervention within the seven governorates in Lebanon that house ISs. The WAP allows implementing partners to access online data and business intelligence generated data interpretations to inputs of WASH field officers on the ground. In terms of emergency response and planning, the WAP has proven to be a critical sector-wide tool for highlighting the types of potential services required to influence day-to-day programme planning, decision making, and national response plans for 312,531 refugees in ISs. Additionally, it advises the monitoring and evaluation of current and past conditions in ISs. The WAP supports the WaSH actors to ensure the WaSH response in all ISs is systematically prioritized and targeted enabling the most effective utilization of any level of funding by:

• Defining which ISs are the most WaSH vulnerable and what specific factors contribute to this vulnerability;

• Through a weighted scoring system ranking all IS in an online live database;

• Enabling all partners to update the status of the ISs they are responsible for with new data that changes the vulnerability score;

• Evaluating the impact of targeted and prioritized WaSH activities after a period

Several criteria have been considered to evaluate vulnerability. Those criteria were defined based on the desired status of ISs to be independent. The Independence of an IS was defined as:

1. Safely managed drinking water (improved facility/facilities -located on-premises, available when needed, and free from contamination);

2. Safely managed sanitation (private improved facilities -where fecal wastes are safely disposed on-site or transported and treated off-site; plus, handwashing facilities with soap and water);

3. Appropriate hygiene behavior by its residents in the four critical areas of handwashing, menstrual hygiene management (MHM), safe water handling, and the safe disposal of excreta;

4. Households whose net income is sufficient to cover their basic needs for a dignified way of living in a displacement setting (affordable WaSH);

5. Negligible environmental, health or social impacts due to WaSH-related activities;

6. Low level of risk for the site to be evicted for any reason;

This tool is robust and straightforward. It enables agencies to prioritize and focus their intervention in the most in need sites as well as to tailor their response to provide the most significant impact. The agencies, having dedicated access online, can make automatic use of those data in their daily programming and decision making as well as can use this to inform their Monitoring and Evaluation plans and reports.