If there was ever any question about what a young Zakiya A. Seymour would pursue for her career, it was answered – over and over – by her doting father, Cornell Seymour (ChemE ’73).
“The people who do what you want to do are engineers,” he told his pint-sized daughter when she pummeled him with questions about practically everything. “Engineers answer the questions you are asking.”
Now a doctoral candidate in environmental engineering, Zakiya has narrowed the focus of those questions, but she hasn’t stopped asking them.
Her terminal research topic, “Understanding What Sanitation Users Value- Examining Preferences and Behaviors for Sanitation Systems” looks at the wide-ranging social considerations that impact the use of sanitation technology in developing nations.
“Growing up in Saudi Arabia, I was always interested in water – where it comes from, how we use it, how to save it,” she said. “But sanitation technology – removing what we’ve put in the water – is more interesting from an engineering standpoint. It’s more complex, more of a challenge. After all, it’s easier to put contaminants in water than it is to take them out.”
Investigating this challenge led Zakiya to South Africa, where she conducted her doctoral research in Kayamandi, a township bordering the city of Stellenbosch. There, over the course of more than nine months, 760 residents were interviewed about their toileting habits – the technologies they preferred, the safety and proximity of their toilets, odors, wait times and other customs that frame this habitual behavior.
Though she is still analyzing the data for specific conclusions, she can already see confirmation of its overarching importance.
“Working on this makes it clear that this is about human rights. Sanitation technology is something we all need, no matter where we live or who we are. And it’s not a white porcelain bowl in many countries,” she said.
“Access to sanitation provides dignity, value and self-worth to all people. My research looks at user preferences because that determines if people will accept, and ultimately, use the technology.”
Political, social and economic issues play enormous roles in determining what sort of sanitation technology will be used in different cultures. For instance, the standard western style water-based toilet consumes more water than many developing countries can provide.
New eco-friendly toilets don’t require water, but they often require that users segregate liquid and solid waste by squatting over different receptacles.
“That might be great for a young man, but for an elderly woman, it’s going to be a problem,” says Zakiya.
Another cultural difference: not everyone wants to (or can) have a toilet in their home.
“What we’re finding in Kayamandi is that a lot more people use communal sanitation facilities than we had thought. It’s probably more than 60 percent,” she said.
Communal facilities can invite a host of other problems – long lines, unsafe locales, excessive distance – any of which may prompt users to employ so-called “bag sanitation” to dispose of their waste.
“We were asking people what their walking and waiting thresholds are before they would result to using a trash bag or a bucket to defecate,” she said.
Ultimately, Zakiya Seymour will use her research to develop an optimization and a simulation model, both of which will help planners to make appropriate decisions when implementing sanitation technology.
“The optimization model will look at the ideal technology from a user’s perspective. What do they prefer?” she explained. “The simulation model will look at how different technologies actually work in various scenarios.”
Before that research is fully written up, Zakiya will be heading off to Washington, D.C. to do public policy work on developing countries, hopefully with either the U.S. State Department or the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Sponsored by Georgia Tech, the summer 2013 internship will give Zakiya a unique opportunity to explore the nexus between social policy and engineering expertise. It’s a topic that has natural appeal for her.
“What I’ve found in my research is that people who are in need – the disadvantaged in developing countries – are very creative, very innovative. That insight can often be forgotten when we in the West have technical expertise to share,” she says.
“I always tell my students [in the Georgia Tech chapter of Engineers Without Borders] ‘The people you are trying to help in developing countries are the subject matter experts. You are the technology experts. You can help them solve problems, but you have to ask questions.’”
A native of Georgia, Zakiya A. Seymour spent most of her first 12 years in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia before moving to Atlanta as a teenager. She received her bachelors of science degree in civil engineering from Tennessee State University and her masters in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. A National Science Foundation fellow, she expects to finish her doctoral work at Georgia Tech in 2013 and looks forward to pursuing a career with either a humanitarian organization or a government agency that is focused on aiding developing countries.
Take a moment to view this slideshow of images from Zakiya's research in Kayamandi.
