European Space Agency and the Toilet Board Coalition Partnership

 

 

 

 

 

The Toilet Board Coalition (TBC), the world's first business-led platform focused on accelerating the Sanitation Economy, has announced a partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) to utilise the technologies of space to help address the global sanitation crisis.

 

Sanitation is also an important issue for astronauts in space. Through this partnership, the TBC will gain a better insight and understanding into space technologies and will assess potential synergies for the Sanitation Economy.

 

The Sanitation Economy monetises toilet provision, products and services, biological resources, data and information to provide benefits across the economy and society. As part of this, the Smart Sanitation Economy, which will be the focus of this partnership, refers to digitised sanitation systems that optimise data for operating efficiencies, maintenance, plus consumer use and health information insights.

 

Charlie Beevor, Chairman, Toilet Board Coalition said: “It’s not every day that we see a partnership between a sanitation coalition and a space agency. However, working together will provide the expertise and insights needed to better understand the full potential of the Smart Sanitation Economy. Whilst its currently the least developed element of our strategy, we also think it could have the biggest impact on addressing some of the most-pressing sanitation challenges around the world.”

 

Cheryl Hicks, Executive Director, Toilet Board Coalition added: “Today, 2.3 billion people do not have access to sanitation. We need big, and innovative approaches to disrupt our current trajectory. The Smart Sanitation Economy seeks to leverage new technologies to drive new value from sanitation systems, which is exactly what we aim to do with the ESA.”

 

The ESA's Business Applications team supports the development, implementation and pilot operations of downstream space-based services. These are applications that utilise data from existing space assets in combination with terrestrial technologies to deliver sustainable services for the benefit of user communities. Acting at the intersection of innovation and business, ESA Business Applications helps stakeholders in addressing commercial and technical risks throughout the application development lifecycle, thereby transforming commercially promising space-based concepts into operational, profitable and self-sustaining applications.

 

“Our preparatory work has identified several areas which could benefit from the utilisation of space technology and data. For example, opportunities to establish preventive health information systems by combining health data from smart sensors on toilets with environmental data and disease risk factors provided by satellite Earth Observation data” said Davide Coppola, European Space Agency.