The project management board meeting of CLARA project (Capacity-Linked water supply and sanitation improvement for Africa’s peri-urban and Rural Areas) was held last October 9th-11th, 2013 in Nakuru, Kenya. Mr. Rafael Casielles attended on behalf of BIOAZUL.

After two years and a half of the beginning of the project, CLARA partners have gathered in the Kenyan city of Nakuru to organize the last phase of the project. Important results have been achieved so far. The most important one is probably the Simplified Planning Tool, an Excel based tool which is able to perform a cost-benefit analysis of different water supply and sanitation systems. This analysis enables to compare different water supply and sanitation alternatives and support planners and authorities in the decision making process. The objective of the tool is to perform the comparison of fundamentally different water and sanitation systems at a very early planning stage, requiring a limited amount of effort from the side of the planner, respectively creating minimal cost for the client.

BIOAZUL, as part of the European team, is now working on the development of an end-user manual in order to facilitate the correct use of the planning tool. The tool will be of open access and will be available in the CLARA web site: http://clara.boku.ac.at/