Redefining sustainable wastewater treatment: integrating social life cycle costing into water resource management

ABSTRACT

Wastewater resource management decisions are still made without a consistent method for considering social, environmental, and financial costs. Current frameworks cover some aspects of sustainability, yet none offer standardised, reproducible monetisation of social impacts. This loophole continues to produce inequitable outcomes and limits accountability for decisions regarding infrastructure investments. This critical review introduces a new conceptual framework of the integrated social-hydrological assessment model (ISHAM), combining the social life cycle costing (S-LCC) model with the hydrological model and economic analysis. The ISHAM framework consists of four interlinked modules: social impact assessment, hydrological modelling, economic and environmental analysis, and policy and decision-making interface. This review found that S-LCC can enhance the potential for more equitable decision-making by integrating it into wastewater resource management. The standardised monetisation architecture of ISHAM is more differentiated than current frameworks and offers a reproducible foundation for wastewater governance through social accountability. This review closes a methodological gap that has been found in more recent syntheses of the field and offers a systematic roadmap to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers towards the goal of social inclusion in wastewater management.