Water and Health

The contribution of civil and environmental engineers to the present excellent state of health in our society was and is enormous. Civil and environmental water engineers are also health engineers. Good design, operation and maintenance of water systems is key in health protection and central to the Sustainable Development Goals. The global burden of waterborne diseases is still very high and largely preventable! The disease burden is particularly high in low income countries, but also high income countries have water and health challenges. Look at the Flint drinking-water crisis (lead and Legionella), the increasing number of outbreaks of Legionella via cooling towers and hot water systems, increasing reuse, antibiotic resistance in the environment, water in the city etc.

This course aims to empower you with knowledge to incorporate health-thinking in your engineering skills. Knowledge on human diseases related to water; pathogenic microbes, antimicrobial resistance and toxic chemicals and the diseases they cause, how these contaminants behave in the water environment and how they can be transmitted through water systems and cause disease. Many different health hazards, and you will learn to design a water system that is safe or evaluate the safety of an existing water system using a uniform health impact assessment approach. The WHO frameworks and guidelines on risk assessment of water and health are central to this course.

Assessment (Formative): Assessment is based on a group assignment to perform a quantitative Health Impact Assessment (Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment or otherwise) of a selected exposure to pathogenic micro-organisms (or toxic chemicals) via a (engineered or non-engineered) water system. You obtain the knowledge on the methodology to conduct this assignment partly from the lectures, and must collect and critically evaluate information from the scientific literature or databases. The assignment projects must be executed in groups of 2 persons. At the end of the course, you and your fellow student have to present this assignment and submit your group report. In addition, individual group members have to submit a written recommendation section about their groups assignment. The report should contain 10.000 words (with illustrations, tables, literature references).

Assessment (summative): Assignment, judged on three components: presentation (25%), report (50%) and individual recommendations (25%).

For more information on grading, see article 14 in the Rules and Guidelines (RGBE):

https://www.tudelft.nl/en/student/ceg-student-portal/education/education-information/educational-rules-and-regulations

Permitted Materials during Exam

N/A