Small-scale Supply Systems Research Articles

What Determines Access to Piped Water in Rural Areas? Evidence from Small-Scale Supply Systems in Rural Brazil

Summary This paper investigates whether small-scale water supply systems implemented and operated by water user associations increase access to piped water supply in rural Brazil by more than systems by local governments. Starting from 15% to 16% in the year 2000, access rates in rural areas with water user associations increased to 33.4% in 2010. In areas with local government supply systems, access rates only increased to 24.9%. Based on data from Brazilian census and the national water and sanitation survey, the empirical analysis in this paper shows that the observed difference is effectively due to project-type choice. Additionally it points toward higher accountability as a potential reason for better results of community-based projects. In municipalities where social groups requested a new system before the local government started implementation and therefore public awareness for the project was higher, the increase in access rates is comparable to the increase in municipalities with water user association projects. The same is true if local media is present or political competition in local elections is higher. As the effect of project type on access rates might be confounded by simultaneous drivers of project-type choice and access rates, the quantitative analysis is based on a difference-in-difference estimator in combination with kernel matching to overcome the endogeneity of project type. The treatment effect revealed by this analysis is robust to various specification changes and the robustness checks show no structural differences between treatment and control groups that could bias the results. The calculation of matching weights for the kernel matching is informed by semi-structured interviews with academics and sector experts in Brazil explaining the determinants of project choice. The interviews highlight the political economy behind infrastructure expansion in rural Brazil.

Clustering structure and logistics: A new framework for supply network analysis

Analysis of supply networks has been receiving abundant attention and enormous progress during the past decades. Most of the works focused on the detailed functionality of individuals in a small scale supply system while the network topology is often overlooked. Recently, network theory is introduced to study the structure–activity relations in supply networks. However, the understanding of connectivity pattern and collective behavior in large scale system is still limited. In our work, we propose a framework to model the supply network and analyze the relation between the clustering structure of the system and the dynamical logistic processes. In this framework, Configuration Models are used to build supply networks with different connectivity structures. Then by applying the logistic model on the networks, we could simulate the dynamical processes and evaluate the logistic performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the logistic dynamics of supply networks are highly related to the clustering structure. Using two measurements, we show that the supply networks with clustering structure can provide better services than those without by performing shorter Order lead-time and higher Delivery efficiency.

Institutional Determinants of the Impact ofCommunity‐Based Water Services:Evidence from Sri Lanka and India

The objective of this article is to start unravelling that question by analyzing selected institutional determinants of the impact and performance of community-based water services. Using quantitative and qualitative data from 1088 rural households and 50 water committees this study investigates how service rules and practices social capital and governmental and nongovernmental organization institutions affect the impact and performance of services supported by three projects in Sri Lanka and India that are financed by the World Bank. In this article we focus on measuring and econometrically analyzing selected aspects of project design and implementation such as the importance of community participation in service design and decision making. This article is also one of the first to measure and econometrically analyze the effect of social capital on the impact of community-based water services. (excerpt)