Mental model approach to wastewater treatment plant project delivery during emergency response

The proper management of water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services is critical in serving displaced populations. In 2015, the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan serving the displaced Syrian populations became one of the first in the world to have an on-site advanced wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Although there exist guidelines and best practices on the proper WWTP incident management, evidence suggests that they are largely ineffective in providing substantial benefits to active incident management. This study applied a mental model approach to investigate the Azraq WWTP project stakeholder decision practices during an active incident management phase and to initiate work to identify the factors that influence the WWTP project delivery during a disaster response. These findings showed that improving the practitioners' ability to recognize and address the nontechnical internal concepts that impact their decision processes could positively influence the wastewater treatment plant construction and operation in new and challenging project conditions. The implementable recommendations include flat communication structures, training for locating knowledge within new disaster response project groups, and increasing the stakeholders' ability to create improvised solutions on the basis of their existing professional knowledge.