Search

South Africa is a water scarce country with deteriorating water resources. Faced with tight fiscal and water resource constraints, water utilities would have to adopt technically efficient water management technologies to meet developmental socio-economic objectives of universal coverage, aligned to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal 6. It is important to measure the technical efficiency of utilities as accurately as possible in order to inform policy. We do this by using a non-parametric method known as Data Envelopment Analysis to determine, measure, analyse and benchmark the technical efficiency of all water boards in South Africa. Our contribution to the literature is twofold: This is the first paper to model technical efficiency of water boards as utility suppliers and guardians of water services in South Africa, and second, we address the over- and underestimation issues of technical efficiency measurement in the water sector. We do this by modelling one of the most pronounced negative externalities from water provision (water losses) as an undesirable output using the approach developed by You and Yan. We find, on average, technical efficiency of water boards is 49%, with only three of the nine water boards technically efficient. Six of the smaller water boards showed high levels of inefficiency with an inefficiency rate of 51%, which is equivalent to wastage in expenditure of R3.7 billion. Six water boards operate at increasing returns to scale and two are scale efficient. Only Rand and Sedibeng water boards exhibited decreasing returns to scale. Therefore, redirecting potential efficiency savings to optimal uses could result in technical and scale efficiency for the sector. Scale efficiency results seem to support larger regional water boards as small- to medium-sized water boards are scale inefficient with low technical efficiency. For example, Amatola Water (small water board) with an efficiency score of only 16% has a total expenditure of 18% of that of Umgeni (large water board), but sells only 6.7% of the quantity sold by Umgeni. Amatola also has seven times the proportion of water losses compared with Umgeni and charges 1.6 times the tariff of Umgeni. The ratio model with an undesirable output outperforms previous methods to deal with undesirable (bad) outputs, which either provide an over- or underestimation of technical efficiency. HIGHLIGHTS Maiden paper is to benchmark technical efficiency of all water boards in South Africa.; We address the over- and underestimation issues of technical efficiency measurement in the water sector by treating undesirable output.

In 2018, the Korean government established a legal foundation for integrated water management. Accordingly, various measures for integrated water management were taken, and water research and development (R&D) is being integrated with the Ministry of Environment. Strategic planning is needed for the efficient implementation of integrated large-scale water R&D. This study aims to analyze the efficiency of large-scale R&D programs in the field of water resources conducted by the Korean government and identify matters of priority for planning future water resources R&D programs. An empirical analysis was conducted using data envelopment analysis (DEA), in particular, a non-radial slack-based measure (SBM) model was applied to consider slacks in the input and output variables. The results showed that the efficiency of collaborative R&D projects was relatively lower than that of single projects. Further, corporate research institutes, which are typically considered as the leaders of technological innovation, were found to have conducted projects less efficiently than universities or public research institutes. Based on these results, this study recommends that: (1) a system to maximize the advantages of collaborative research should be established; (2) institutional support to enhance the enterprise's innovative activities should be prepared; and (3) comprehensive, long-term planning for integrated water management should be implemented. Highlights The Korean government has established a legal foundation for IWRM.; SBM model of DEA was used to measure efficiency of water R&D projects in Korea.; The efficiency of single R&D projects is better than that of collaborative projects.; Corporate research institutes have less efficient R&D projects than universities or public research institutes.; IWRM should be incorporated with comprehensive, long-term perspective.

In its 30 years of existence, there are still many improvement possibilities in studies performing the life cycle assessment (LCA) of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Hence, this paper aims to start a guideline development for LCA of urban WWTPs based on the information available in the scientific literature on the topic. The authors used the ProKnow-C systematic review methodology for paper selection and 111 studies were analyzed. The most significant points that can be improved are caused by missing essential information (e.g. functional unity and input data). Other important methodological aspects are covered: allocation process, functional unit choice, sensitivity analysis, and important fluxes to be considered. Many opportunities within the LCA of WWTPs were identified, such as optimization of WWTP operational aspects and resource recovery. Furthermore, LCA should be combined with other methodologies such as big data, data envelopment analysis, life cycle cost assessment, and social life cycle assessment. To achieve this potential, it is clear that the scientific and technical community needs to converge on a new protocol to ensure that LCA application becomes more reliable and transparent.

Evaluating and improving water use efficiency is considered one of the main ways of tackling water shortage challenges in water-scarce cities. A useful indicator for evaluating industrial water use efficiency is the relative water use efficiency (RWUE). In this paper, an industrial RWUE evaluation scheme is proposed based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) theory. In this scheme, the RWUE is divided into overall efficiency (OE), pure technical efficiency (PTE), and scale efficiency (SE). In order to help decision-makers specify the focal industry of efficiency improvement, direct water use is distinguished from indirect water use. By employing this industrial RWUE evaluation scheme, this research calculated the industrial RWUEs for 25 representative industries of Beijing (1990–2010). Results show that the OE, PTE, and SE of Beijing have improved significantly. In the primary industry, the scale adjustment fundamentally lifted OE. For the secondary industries, there still exists much room for water use efficiency improvement in technical innovation. Some emerging tertiary industries replaced traditional tertiary industries as the most efficient water users. This study serves as a valuable reference for the implementation of the Strictest Administration of Water Resources (SAWR) of China, and provides policy-makers worldwide with a useful framework of understating industrial water use efficiency.

A coordinated nexus of agricultural resources is vital to achieve food security and sustainable development in China. Comprehensively considering the water–energy–food nexus as well as the external environment, this study adopts a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) modelling evaluation method to assess the agricultural production efficiency (APE) of seven provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River (MLYR) during 1996–2015. The results show that the three-stage DEA modelling evaluation method reveals real APE and is considered to be a better quantitative method than conventional approaches. A gradually widening range of APE is an important challenge for this region. Significantly, this region generates huge demands for agricultural resources. Moreover, regional emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) decreased from 34.20 million tons standard coal in 1996 to 32.11 million tons standard coal in 2015, though APE has continued to decrease by 2.56% in the past two decades. In general, the management and technology levels should be improved simultaneously, even though specific opportunities for APE improvement vary across provinces in MLYR. However, understanding the temporal and spatial variation of APE along with the WEF nexus from a production-based insight is a vital step toward appropriately targeted policy making for nationwide resources savings and emissions reduction.

Water conservancy investment affects economic development. To scientifically analyze its economic efficiency, this paper employs a projection pursuit clustering model based on the real-coded accelerated genetic algorithm to reduce the number of output index systems for each year, and the relative economic efficiency is obtained for 13 cities in Heilongjiang Province during the period 2007–2012 using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. The spatial distribution regulation is described based on the average efficiency derived for the period 2007–2012. Finally, the output values are optimized for ineffective cities under the optimization principle according to the 2012 values. The results show that the output index system is different for each year. Most cities exhibit comprehensive effectiveness, and the development of water conservancy is generally good. The spatial distribution regulation of economic efficiency tends to be high in the south and low in the north because it is related to local economic development and water policies. To achieve comprehensive effectiveness, the output indices need to be adjusted. This study assists with the promotion of efficient development plans for water conservancy systems and the economic efficiency of water conservancy investment in Heilongjiang Province.

Water supply services in India are currently not regulated and remain essential monopolies under the strict control of government. These services are mostly perceived as inefficient, reflecting insufficient municipal revenue generations which result in loss-making municipalities that need to be subsidized by the government. The efficiencies and productivities remain largely unmeasured and undetermined, and therefore the perception of inefficient services is not backed by scientific studies. This paper therefore sets up a framework for measuring the performance and productivity of Indian water supply operations. The study utilizes panel data on 21 municipalities observed over the financial years 2005 and 2010, to analyze the relative efficiencies and productivity growths of utilities. Data envelopment analysis is used to obtain efficiency scores and productivity measures such as the Malmquist index. The results indicate the presence of large relative inefficiencies and decreasing productivity of water supply services over time, alluding to a failure to revise tariffs upwards despite increasing input costs over time, thereby driving the need for sector regulation and tariff revision in accordance with X-factors, which was found to have a mean value of 2.4% for possible price cap regulation in the sector. The paper highlights related policy implications.

This paper investigates the role of service quality to customers in the efficiency assessment of water companies in England and Wales. To achieve this, data envelopment analysis techniques are employed to compute the technical efficiency of the water companies following two approaches: (i) traditional assessment based on quantity variables (without the inclusion of service quality variables) and (ii) alternative assessment considering quantity and service quality variables as undesirable outputs. The analysis covers 22 water and sewerage companies and water only companies providing drinking water services. The results indicate that the traditional efficiency assessment reveals a high level of technical efficiency, suggesting that the English and Welsh water industry is mature and that one of the challenges it faces is improving service quality. When introducing service quality variables in the evaluation, the average scores of technical efficiency slightly decrease. This suggests that, on average, water companies do not necessarily provide high quality of service, meaning that the traditional efficiency assessment favours their performance. Quality of service supplied to customers within a water sector matters and should be taken into account during the benchmarking process as it could assist regulated companies and regulators to improve performance and incentives, respectively.

A number of international initiatives have been undertaken in recent years to develop benchmarking frameworks. Performance indicator system and data envelopment analysis are the two most widely used methods for performance assessment as is evident from the established literature on benchmarking. This paper demonstrates two benchmarking approaches using these two methods for the selected 12 Indian urban water utilities (municipal bodies) of Maharashtra state/province. Both the methodologies have been compared and analysed. The outcomes from both the methods are largely found to be consistent and mutually complementary. The proposed benchmarking techniques would serve as an important tool to assess the performance, induce competitive environment and encourage efficient practices by the urban water utilities.

This study presents an indicator to measure the performance of domestic water management that focuses on raw water consumption and sewage treatment by using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique. The data are extracted from twenty-two counties/cities in Taiwan covering the period of 2009–2011, and eventually sixty-six observations are obtained. We compare the management performance between urban and rural regions and examine the factor that affects the performance variation by using the Tobit regression. The results find that a spatial inequality exists across urban regions and rural regions. The analysis results derived from the Tobit model find that the extent rate of sewerage systems, the volunteer participation rate and the education level play significant roles in affecting management performance. An increase in each per cent of the extent rate of sewerage systems, public participation and high-level educated citizens may lead to an increase of management performance by 0.37339%, 0.9543% and 0.9756%, respectively.

Water supply services in urban India are essential functions of urban local bodies or municipalities. These services are mostly perceived as unsatisfactory across urban centres and the sector is widely perceived to be misgoverned with large number of municipalities making financial losses. However, this common perception of inefficient services has not much scientific basis as the efficiencies of these services are not measured. This paper, therefore, attempts to evolve a framework for evaluating the relative inefficiencies of water supply services and applies a non-parametric approach, data envelopment analysis (DEA), to 20 urban centres in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India, by applying three different models. The results of the analysis indicate that there are significant inefficiencies amongst the various municipalities that supply water. It was found that larger cities exhibit better efficiencies than smaller ones, requiring policy interventions. However, even the larger municipalities need restructuring and downsizing of their operations to be more efficient. DEA results also show that significant savings with respect to operating expenditures, staff and non-revenue water are actually possible if best practices are adopted. The paper discusses the results of the study in the context of policy issues that are relevant from a developing country perspective.

Water leaks are an environmental and sustainable issue as well as an economic issue. The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of a sample of Spanish urban water systems by considering water leaks in a network as undesirable outputs. Data envelopment analysis (DEA), an analytical benchmarking methodology, is used to calculate technical and economic efficiency. We also discuss the possible relationship between efficiency and tariffs charged to users. Results show that the possibilities for reducing water leaks in networks are high, thus demonstrating that there is room for savings from an economic and environmental point of view. The assessment of efficiency performance could usefully assist local authorities and water suppliers in the task of optimising urban water management.

This study assesses the efficiency of the urban water supply system in 27 selected Indian cities. It applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) as an analytical tool to measure technical efficiency. Cities are categorized into different groups according to the management structure of their water utilities. The results show that within groups, the utilities that are managed by ‘municipal corporations (MCs) and parastatals', with a certain amount of functional autonomy, perform better in comparison to the group ‘MCs and government’ and thus, strengthen the hypothesis that functional autonomy in management leads to better performance of the water utilities. Moreover, the results also have implications for urban domestic water pricing. We find that most water utilities are operating under decreasing returns to scale (DRS), implying that water should be priced at a marginal cost of supply.

This paper proposes the use of directional distance functions and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques to assess technical efficiency in the provision of the different stages of the urban water cycle in Andalusia, a Southern European region. Evaluating performance in the management of specific stages of the urban water cycle provides utility managers and regulating authorities with relevant information that may not be detected by more conventional approaches based on assessing performance at utility level. We find that Andalusian water and sewage utilities could achieve significant increases in the volume of water delivered without diminishing the output of their other services and using the same quantities of inputs. Potential increases are also important for the volume of sewage collected, thus entailing significant environmental benefits in a territory where water scarcity has seen the efficient management of this natural resource become a pressing obligation.

The aim of this study is to estimate both stochastic and mathematical programming efficiency cost frontiers for the Latin American water sector, by means of econometric and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques, using the ADERASA database. ADERASA is the Latin American association for water regulators, which has made a systematic job of data collection, among other initiatives. This study fills a gap in the understanding of relative efficiency in the Latin American water sector, using a consistent database. First, we present a survey of the empirical literature related to cost and production frontiers in the water and sanitation sector. Second, once alternative specifications were chosen, models have been estimated and environmental variables included in an exploratory way. The coefficients have the expected signs and plausible values. Some consistency between methodologies is found. This paper yields two results. The better knowledge of the underlying cost (or production) model is a first step to using benchmarking as a regulatory tool. The policy implications are relatively straightforward. With benchmarking technology it is possible to coordinate the action of different regulators, each with their own asymmetry of information. The key is setting indicative standards which constitute the basis of further discussion.

This paper aims to measure the relative performance of Jordan's water utilities for water sector (WS) and wastewater sector (WWS), and to investigate the major factors behind their inefficiencies. DEA (non-parametric method) and Tobit model (parametric method) were used at two stages. At the first stage DEA was used to evaluate the utilities' efficiency and to investigate the utilities' scale effect on efficiency. At the second stage Tobit model (regression) is applied to determine the impact of the non-controllable factors on utilities' inefficiencies where the efficiency score is the dependent variable in the regression. The results of DEA showed that there is a potential to reduce inputs level: water supply and operational expense (OPEX) for WS, and treated wastewater and OPEX for WWS, by around 15–20 and 23–27%, respectively. Aqaba and Jarash utilities are the most efficient utilities in the WS, while it is Amman utility in the WWS. The utility size has relatively moderate effect on the relative performance. It is concluded that the medium utility size for WS and large utility size for WWS is the most appropriate. Tobit model results indicate that commercialization activities have a clear positive impact on efficiency improvement for both sectors.

Conventional benchmarking measures focus mainly on water produced whilst ignoring water produced but not reaching consumers, unaccounted for water (UFW). Benchmarking must credit utilities for a reduction in UFW and improvements in service delivery. This study measures the performance of 20 urban water utilities using data from an Asian Development Bank survey of Indian water utilities in 2005. It applies directional distance function as an analytical tool for measuring performance of water utilities. The results reveal that at the mean level, Indian water utilities have the potential of increasing water delivery levels and reducing UFW by 20%. About half of that can be realized by changing the scale of operation. Metering of the water delivered and the length of the distribution network are major determinants of performance of water utilities.

This article compares the performance of the Portuguese water services (WS) according to their ownership. Several techniques, such as performance indicators, total factor productivity and data envelopment analysis were used. First, the paper describes the water sector institutional framework in Portugal. Then, it reviews the major theories that relate performance to WS ownership and the main empirical studies developed in this area. Finally, it presents the case study. The conclusions drawn from the study seem to prove the outperformance of the WS under private management in Portugal when compared with the public ones. The quality of service provided by the former is better than that of the latter, which is particularly evident with regard to water quality. Productivity is also superior in private companies. However, the results suggest an opposite trend as far as efficiency is concerned.

In many regions dairy farms and milk processing industries discharge large quantities of their wastes to the surroundings posing serious environmental risks. This problem is mostly faced in small dairy farms and isolated communities lacking both central collection and conventional wastewater treatment systems. Dairy wastewater is characterized by high concentrations of organic matter, solids, nutrients, as well as fractions of dissolved inorganic pollutants, exceeding those levels considered typical for high strength domestic wastewaters. With the purpose of treating the combined dairy and domestic wastewater from a small dairy farm in the Negev Desert of Israel, the use of a recent emerging technology of Immersed Membrane BioReactor (IMBR) was evaluated over the course of 500 test hours, under a variety of wastewater feed quality conditions (during the test periods, the feed BOD5 ranged from 315 ppm up to 4,170 ppm). The overall performance of a pilot-scale Ultrafiltration (UF) IMBR process for a combined domestic and dairy wastewater was analyzed based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. The IMBR performance in terms of membrane performance (permeate flux, transmembrane pressure, and organic removal) and DEA model (Technical Efficiency) was acceptable. DEA is an empirically based methodology and the research approach has been found to be effective in the depiction and analysis for complex systems, where a large number of mutual interacting variables are involved.

The scarcity of fresh water in most of the countries in the Mediterranean Basin makes treated wastewater a valuable alternative water source. The improved technology for the removal of particles, turbidity, bacteria and cysts from effluent, without the use of disinfectants is based on the use of membranes, mainly on micro-filtration (MF) and ultra-filtration (UF). Membrane treatment of secondary effluent sounds attractive since it is a stable water source. Pathogens, soluble organic matters, turbidity, color, parasites and viruses can be removed by UF membrane technology. Experiments are in progress in the commercial fields of Gadash Har Hebron Enterprise (GHHE), located near the City of Arad, Israel. Field data collected from a two-stage UF pilot plant (240 m3/day) enable us to provide performance estimate efficiencies based on the data envelopment analysis method. The research focused on individual UF experiments allowing us to determine the UF performance efficiency in terms of information quality for adequate decision-making. Field results are presented in order to support the theory and related pricing decisions.