Understanding WASH through complex adaptive systems theory

The development community has looked to engineering, social action, planning and evaluation to understand the often inexplicable outcomes of water implementation projects. This paper gives an overview of research that uses Complex Adaptive Systems theory as a framework to investigate the unpredictability of outcomes for community water supply projects. Preliminary interviews and surveys in a remote village in East Timor are used to investigate the viability of social network analysis and system dynamics as tools to make sense of WASH program outcomes.