Investigating the relations between performance indicators of urban water supply in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study investigated the relationships among nine Service Level Benchmarking performance indicators (PI) of urban water supply in India using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) and Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). The findings of ISM have indicated per capita water supply (PCS) as a dependent variable, while water quality is an autonomous variable; complaint redressal and collection efficiency of water charges are driving variables, and the remaining five are linkage variables. Further, fsQCA was used to validate the results of ISM across 53 Indian million-plus cities in the three Baseline Water Stress (BWS) regions, including 17 low-to-high (< 40%), 13 high (40-80%), and 23 very high (> 80%) BWS cities. With PCS as the output condition and the remaining eight PIs as input conditions, fsQCA indicated that low-to-high and high BWS cities follow the ISM results. In contrast, very high BWS cities exhibit contradictory relations to the ISM results.