Management of water and wastewater under the framework of the IMM: The case of the Favela Rocinha

The paper presents the so-called Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM), which is aimed to make cities and human settlements more inclusive, resilient and sustainable. In particular, the paper resumes how it has been implemented to the case study of favela rocinha in rio de Janeiro. IMM is the result of a research project financed by Politecnico di Milano university using Italian national funds allocated by law to social purposes. This kind of projects have to be multidisciplinary and in favour of human and social development. Many are the aspects considered in the project case study: energy, work, mobility, ecosystem, service, food and waste water). for all of these aspects, which are crucial in Rio de Janeiro slums, the engineering issues have to be matched not only with the requests of the other practitioners working on the same area, in a holistic view of the problems, but also with cultural and social constraints. The aim of this approach is to produce integrated solutions which can be understood by the population, made its own and so managed in the best possible way; so, the cultural improvement may also produce a relevant economic activity. In the paper, the methodology for approaching a difficult case like Favela Rocinha is presented, together with the main outcomes of the work of the different specialists who dealt with the different parts of the work. In details, the paper deals specifically with water and wastewater management, to show more deeply the applied methodology. The paper shows that this approach has requested, in some cases, to propose solutions that textbooks would not consider theoretically the ‘best’ ones, but that are more suitable for the actual situation of a slum like favela rocinha, definitively to make the development of those systems more inclusive, resilient and sustainable.