Water Supply Costing Processor (WSCP)

In 2010, the Water Supply Costing Processor spreadsheet was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the University of Geneva as part of a manual prepared for the Department for the Protection of the Human Environment of the WHO (Fonseca et al., 2011). To support the achievement of the MDGs, this Excel spreadsheet identifies, collects, estimates and compares costs of different available technical options that have the potential to provide access to safe drinking water in low-income communities.

The Water Supply Costing Processor analyses technological options according to their main system components (i.e. water sources, collection, conveyance, storage, treatment and distribution). The tool was developed for data analysis and takes into consideration capital maintenance expenditure and other recurrent costs. However, these are not clearly defined. Software costs do include administrative costs of the system, training, promotional and educational costs (Carlevaro and Gonzalez, 2010), but it is not clear if they concern only the expenditures incurred during the project implementation.

The tool and the data were tested in 2007 and 2009 by WHO in several contexts: Peru, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. According to Carlevaro and Gonzalez (2010), the next versions of the tool should include an extended costing method.