Performance Of Water Services Research Articles

THE PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT OF WATER AND SEWERAGE OPERATORS IN ROMANIA THROUGH THE KEY PERFORMANCE INDEX

Both local communities and the government face a real challenge in measuring and improving the performance of water services. At the local, central, and European level, ensuring the population’s access to drinking water and sewage services is an extremely important objective, supported by the significant investments recently made in this sector. The improved performance of businesses in this sector plays a crucial role in achieving this primary objective. Between 2005 and 2010, as a first step in streamlining the activity in this sector, regional water and wastewater operators were established, providing services for the majority of the Romanian population. Although in theory this should have provided the advantage of an economy of scale, in reality it did not produce the expected results; unfortunately, most of these water and wastewater operators remained inefficient. This inefficiency has technical, economic, financial and organizational aspects, which can be monitored and improved with the help of certain key performance indicators. To guarantee access to water in good conditions and in the long term, it is crucial to improve the efficiency of the sector. The average price of drinking water has increased from 2.75 RON/m3 in 2014 to 5.99 RON/m3 in 2023, which means it has almost doubled. In this context, it is crucial to implement a performance measurement system to improve the efficiency and performance of water services. In this article, the authors identify and analyze the economic, financial and technical indicators that can be used as a basis of comparison for regional operators and can contribute to increasing performance. These indicators are designed in such a way as to eliminate the dysfunctions caused by the differences in size between the regional operators, and by creating a performance index suitable for water utilities, they make possible the adequate comparison of their performances.

METODE PEKERJAAN STRUKTUR LINING PADA PROYEK MODERNISASI IRIGASI RENTANG

The Rentang Irrigation Area is a National strategic project located in the lowlands of the lower reaches of the Cimanuk River in the Northeastern part of West Java Province. Modernization of Irrigation is carried out because the age of the irrigation system is decades old, causing the performance of water services to decrease. meanwhile the objective of the Irrigation Modernization is the coating/installation of concrete block lining on river channels so as to reduce the water loss factor. Concrete block lining is a precast concrete specially designed for irrigation canals that function as retaining walls. There are 9 stages of work regarding the Concrete Block Lining Installation Implementation Method, starting from Preparation, Coffering, Dewatering, Cut And Fill, Subgrade, Concrete Block Lining, Caping Beam, Joint Sealent/Filler and Tool Shifting.

Integrated assessment of urban water supply security and resilience: towards a streamlined approach

Urbanization and competing water demand, as well as rising temperatures and changing weather patterns, are manifesting as gradual processes that increasingly challenge urban water supply security. Cities are also threatened by acute risks arising at the intersection of aging infrastructure, entrenched institutions, and the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events. To better understand these multi-layered, interacting challenges of providing urban water supply for all, while being prepared to deal with recurring shocks, we present an integrated analysis of water supply security in New York City and its resilience to acute shocks and chronic disturbances. We apply a revised version of a recently developed, quantitative framework (‘Capital Portfolio Approach’, CPA) that takes a social-ecological-technological systems perspective to assess urban water supply security as the performance of water services at the household scale. Using the parameters of the CPA as input, we use a coupled systems dynamics model to investigate the dynamics of services in response to shocks—under current conditions and in a scenario of increasing shock occurrence and a loss of system robustness. We find water supply security to be high and current response to shocks to be resilient thanks to past shock experiences. However, we identify a number of risks and vulnerability issues that, if unaddressed, might significantly impact the city’s water services in the mid-term future. Our findings have relevance to cities around the world, and raise questions for research about how security and resilience can and should be maintained in the future.

The 12 OECD principles on water governance – When science meets policy

On the 4th of June 2015 the OECD Ministerial Council welcomed the “OECD Principles on Water Governance”. This is one of the most visible and high-level results of two years of activity of the Water Governance Initiative (WGI), a multi-stakeholder platform of more than 100 delegates from public, private and non-profit sectors and gathering twice a year in a policy forum since March 2013. This new guidance for policymakers is rooted in six years of work on multi-level governance of water policy at the OECD, and more recently in the areas of stakeholder engagement, governance and performance of water services, basin governance, and integrity and transparency. The Principles were developed in a bottom-up fashion and led to extensive consultation of multiple and diversified interested parties in the early stages of their preparation. They are clustered around three main driving goals of water governance, namely its effectiveness, its efficiency, and its ability to generate trust and engagement, and are meant to inspire actions leading to better water governance at all levels of government and across the range of stakeholders involved in water policy design and implementation. Based on the authors’ advisory, policymaking and academic experience, the paper will seek to discuss the rationale of the 12 principles and scope the needed conditions for their effective implementation by governments and stakeholders.

A validity assessment of consumer satisfaction to measure performance of water services in Guatemala

This article studies the validity of consumer satisfaction reports as a tool for assessing the performance of water services in Guatemala. Using survey data from 500 households, item-total correlations and Cronbach's alpha coefficients were computed and a factor analysis was conducted to investigate whether qualitative measures of consumer satisfaction with service hours, water treatment, pressure and prices are associated with a single latent scale. In addition, probit and regression models were estimated to identify underlying factors that influence consumer satisfaction. Results show that a considerable percentage of respondents are dissatisfied with current water services, particularly with the number of daily hours of water provision and pressure levels. Findings also indicate that consumer satisfaction is related to service attributes (i.e. frequency of service interruptions and pressure levels) and some personal characteristics. This lends some support to using consumer satisfaction reports, with due caution, to assess service performance in contexts where performance indicators are lacking.