Vehicle tracking- (GPS based)

Background:

A robust and sustainable sanitation system is an essential aspect of urban and development planning. This is why the importance of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), which ensures Clean Water and Sanitation for all, is emphasized: it affects the outcome of other SDGs like eradicating poverty and hunger, ensuring well-being and gender equality, creating sustainable communities, protecting life on land and on water, etc. Inadequate sanitation management creates repercussions for overall social well-being and progress, with adverse environmental, economic and health impacts.

Because of this, there are many global strategies and treatment options for wastewater management and solid waste management. However, one waste stream that is not adequately managed in developing countries is faecal sludge (FS) — the by-product of on-site sanitation systems (OSS). OSS systems accumulate and store faecal matter over 3-5 years, as opposed to sewer systems, which allow the continuous transport of faecal matter with used water. Once the OSS storage is full, the waste is emptied and transported to the treatment plant through vacuum trucks. The end-to-end value chain of safe storage, collection, transport, treatment, and reuse or disposal of faecal matter is called Fecal Sludge and Septage management (FSSM).

India’s FSSM ecosystem is made of highly interdependent parts, across the value chain of generation, containment, transport, treatment, and disposal/reuse. This means that there are different actors at each stage of the value chain whose behaviors and business models affect how well the next stage functions, creating a complex mesh of constraints that affect the effective functioning of sanitation service delivery.

While the linear value chain gives a lucid frame to understand the ideal flow of faecal sludge, there are various points of friction between stakeholders that currently undermine the effectiveness of the sanitation value chain.

Illegal dumping continues to remain a paramount challenge in regards to the waste value chain. Multiple factors contribute to these which include:

No incentives for Citizens to use digital platforms provided by the government: Desludging is usually performed once is 7 years as per the baseline M&E (Measurement and evaluation) study conducted in Orissa and is requested by the citizen when either the tank overflows or there is leakage. In this scenario, it is usually an activity that needs to be performed on an immediate basis. Co-ordinating with the ULB to request for these service, awaiting the assignment of a vendor and then co-ordination with the vendor for the services is a time consuming process. Hence, citizens usually prefer to reach out to vendors directly. When desludging services are provided outside the system, there is no way to track where collected sludge is being disposed.
No incentive for Vendors to use digital platforms provided by the government: The usual practice in regards to availing desludging service is to directly contact vendors providing these service. While DIGIT Sanitation is built as a platform to address the challenge of broken custody of waste across various stakeholders, there is no incentive for vendors to use the platform. Hence, a large number of desludging services are provided outside the platform and there is no way to track process compliance or disposal against these services.
Lack of incentives to dispose fecal sludge at the Treatment Plant: Treatment Plants/Decanting stations for fecal sludge are usually located at a significant distance from the ULB/Village. Given that payment is usually collected from the citizen at the point of desludging, Vendors involved in the transportation of Fecal sludge do not have incentives to dispose at the Fecal Sludge Treatment Plant/Septage Treatment Plant.
Profitability of Vendors providing desludging services: Various business models exist for provision of desludging services (collection and transportation of fecal sludge from the point of generation to point of treatment). In some cases, the Urban Local Body owns and operates a list of vehicles for desludging. However, across the globe, the market is largely dominated by private players who own vehicles of various capacities (1000L, 2000L, 5000L etc) provide desludging services - and also define the pricing for each of these vehicles. Since the volume of transactions is low, and the distance to be travelled to dispose of fecal sludge at a Treatment Plant is high, profitability of vendors is a concern.
No traceability of vehicle trips: Governing bodies, usually have no traceability of vehicle trips due to absence of real-time tracking, both trips happening within the system or outside. If informed in time about potential illegal dumping, local authorities can take impromptu action to stop the disposal and/or preventive measures to avoid the incidents in future. Transactional data on trips can help governing bodies identify vendors/vehicles participating in illegal dumping and common spots for illegal dumping.

To address some of these challenges, we are looking to enhance DIGIT Sanitation with the following:

Discovery and Automated assignment of requests

Discovery of service vendors within a particular location boundary by citizens/ULB employees basis proximity from current location, availability and size of vehicle
Automated assignment of service vendors basis their distance from current location, availability and size of vehicle
Rejection and reassignment of requests in case of non-response/feedback from citizen/non-acceptance by vendor.

Define pricing for services

Build a pricing model that lets the vendors set the pricing based on all available factors (Factors could be size of vehicle, location of property, time of the day etc)
Allow ULB to define floor and ceiling prices.
Provide subsidies for particular localities/geographic boundaries/property types, at the admin level. These can be built into the system by availability of rebates/discounts

OPTIONAL

Dynamic Pricing Calculator

Build a pricing model that calculates the price of a transportation service based on different trip related parameters such as distance, waiting time, trip time, surge in demand
Allow for governments to provide subsidies for particular localities/geographic boundaries/property types. These can be built into the system by availability of rebates/discounts.

Payment linked to disposal

Interface for vendors to collect and record payment from citizen on sludge pickup
Total Payment disbursal (100% of revenue from trips) to be calculated only for trips completed.

Async coordination between parties

People requesting services should have the option to add current location or other locations based on the search option from Maps.
End location should be auto defined basis plants mapped in the region.
Location and route to pick up and disposal should be visible to the vendor.

Capturing Vehicle movement

Identification of longer waiting time of vehicles away from pick up and disposal sites - this could be a possible indication of the illegal disposal (define rules). Real-time alerts to vendor/ULB in such cases.
The popular open disposal spots to be defined as prohibited zones and any desludging vehicles around those areas are an indication of open disposal. Real-time alerts to vendor/ULB in such cases. (Optional: Overtime, suggestions by the system to identify prohibited zones basis transactional data)
Capturing ULB feedback basis alerts to track action against alerts and capture whether the alert is true or false.
Closure of service request only upon entry at Decanting/Treatment site (Geo-fencing)
Tracking of trips by citizen, ULB and vendor for ongoing trips of vehicles
Track all trucks in fleet for ULB and Vendor (Idle, Collecting, Disposing)
Track movement of vehicles even beyond applications being serviced via the platform.

Collection of transportation related data against a vehicle

Time for pickup
Time for disposal
Total time taken
Distance travelled
Idle times

The above list is indicative only, and participants may define additional enhancements basis understanding of challenges and potential solutions.

Challenge | Benefit -- | -- No incentives for Citizens to use digital platforms provided by the government | Reduced time to service Higher number of citizens raising requests via digital platform No incentive for Vendors to use digital platforms provided by the governmentProfitability of Vendors providing desludging services: | Higher demand by citizens on platform will to increased business for vendorsImproved pricing per trip leading to improved profitabilityImproved coordination between citizen and service provider Will be able to track all trucks in his fleet (Idle, Collecting, Disposing & under maintenance) Lack of incentives to dispose fecal sludge at the Treatment Plant | Built in incetive to dispose at TP by linking payments No traceability of vehicle trips | Prevention of illegal dumping

A successful solution would consist of the following:

Cost:

No vendor lock-in

Technology Principles:

Built as an enhancement to DIGIT Sanitation
The ability to exchange information with existing digital solutions/DPIs implemented — this should accelerate information sharing and increase visibility.
The solution should adhere to OpenAPI and Open Spec standards.
Ensure data security and privacy
Ensure inclusiveness through design (multi-channel availability, language localization, etc)
Ensure ease of deployment, development and operations keeping State Capacity in mind
Specific capabilities within the solution should be usable independently

Completeness

Demonstrate a working model

Key principles to keep in mind:

Comfort of Vendors and Citizens to use using digital applications is low. It is imperative, hence, that it is designed for ease of use, with a need to enter minimum data.
The above is applicable for employees of the Urban Local bodies/panchayat responsible.
For governing authorities, it im important that data is presented in a format that is both easily consumable and provides the ability to ask questions and drill down on the data. A visual representation of the data is the best way to drive this.
While the initial inclination is to keep collecting as much information as possible, it is important to distinguish between what is absolutely necessary and what may be good to have.