2134/23637 Brian Reed Brian Reed Surface water in temporary humanitarian settlements Loughborough University 2017 untagged 2017-01-09 12:11:44 Journal contribution https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Surface_water_in_temporary_humanitarian_settlements/9442223 In the Humanitarian Innovation Fund Gap Analysis for water, sanitation and hygiene issues (Bastable and Russell 2013), field staff identified environmental management of surface water as an area of concern, although this was not reflected at a head office level. This difference of perspectives could be an under reporting of this aspect of environmental sanitation to the global humanitarian community or a failure of experts to communicate the required response to surface water management in camps for displaced people. Reviewing core humanitarian engineering texts and global standards, this paper sets out the current state of the art and shows that there is a lack of clarity in the “ownership” of the problem and the established responses are disjointed and poorly articulated, especially at field staff level. Since the core texts have been written, there has been a change in the way surface water is being managed in urban areas. Sustainable urban drainage practices may have potential in resource poor but densely populated situations such as some refugee camps. The paper highlights the lack of adequate advice in both content and delivery mechanisms. More gaps and challenges were identified than solutions, but this is research narrowed down the gaps identified in 2013 to more specific issues, which is a step further to solving the problem.