water utility performance Articles
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Greta and the Great Water Utility Performance Conundrum
Has She Only Gone and Done It? Call me a free marketeer if you must, but I do like a good bit of competition to compel improved performance. Adam Smith (he of the “Wealth of Nations” and “invisible hand” fame) perhaps said it best: Smith was pretty on the money about the role of Government in competitive markets too: ...
By Syrinix Ltd
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National monitoring of water utility performance in France
Performance assessment has recently been applied to water utilities in France. Performance indicators (PIs) were initially developed as an aid to the control of public service delegation by local authorities. After a long process, a group of PIs was integrated into mandatory annual reports on service quality and price, in order to better inform utility users and reinforce the regulation of the ...
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Topic: Benchmarking and Performance Indicators
One of the important ways organizations, evaluate the effectiveness of a process or activity is by defining and using some performance measures. These measures could be quantitative or qualitative but should be clearly defined, easy to use and understand, technically sound, be able to measure trends over time, and be relevant to the users—in this case water utility operational staff and ...
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Criteria and Performance Measures for Iskandar Malaysia Urban Water Shortages Management
In Malaysia, usage of performance indicators are still new and evaluation of water utilities performance in each state are not standardized. In Iskandar Malaysia, with shortages predicted by the year 2025, new water alternatives and management measures needed to overcome this problem. Thus, criteria and performance measures were outlined for the selection of alternative water supply management. ...
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Efficient water utilities: use of performance indicator system and data envelopment analysis
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 ...
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Advances in benchmarking to improve water utility operations: a review of six IWA books
Six recent publications by the International Water Association underscore the growing importance of quantitative studies of water utilities for identifying (1) performance patterns, (2) trends in key indicators and (3) best practice. Since each author takes a different approach to the problem of performance measurement and incentives for improvement, the books provide different perspectives on ...
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Egypt: Improving public sector performance - institutional strengthening of the Alexandria general water authority
The case illustrates how challenges are addressed and initiatives for improved performance are developed and agreed to by AWGA for implementation over a 5-year and 10-year period. It reveals the process undertaken by the Steering Committee and Assessment Teams to evaluate AWGA’s institutional capacity, including organization, management, planning, training and human resources, financial, ...
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Investigating unaccounted for water and its components in Zomba City water supply system, Malawi
This study assessed Unaccounted for Water (UFW) in Zomba City, Malawi in 2009 and quantified its real and apparent loss components. The study was carried out in the period January–May 2009 and focussed on three selected water supply zones (Airwing, Malonje and Sadzi) especially for determination of the components of non-revenue water (NRW). Field measurements of flow and utility records ...
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Counting the Drops: Leak Detection and Auditing Methods for Property Managers
Leaks are never good, whether it’s a leaky boat or a leaky pipe system. Even advanced water utility systems can experience water loses ranging from 10 – 40%, with these losses being proportional to the population of the urban area serviced by the water distribution system. Large cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are vulnerable to staggering amounts of water loss in ...
By WaterSignal
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Unaccounted for water and the performance of water utilities: an empirical analysis from India
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. ...
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The performance of water utilities in Jordan
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 ...
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A strategic approach for Water Safety Plans implementation in Portugal
Effective risk assessment and risk management approaches in public drinking water systems can benefit from a systematic process for hazards identification and effective management control based on the Water Safety Plan (WSP) concept. Good results from WSP development and implementation in a small number of Portuguese water utilities have shown that a more ambitious nationwide strategic approach ...
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The 21st Century Water Utility Initiative: how to boost operational performance of water utilities by up to 20%
The 21st Century Water Utility Initiative is a powerful and innovative approach to help water utilities assess their current operational performance, identify improvement actions and track impact year after year. First success cases suggest that cost reductions range from 10 to 20% within 1–3 years, with improved customer satisfaction. This approach can help water utilities in ...
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Towards a Service Quality Model for Water Utilities
Regulation of water utilities is often achieved through “yard-stick competition”, where the service quality of monopolistic service providers is compared with peer organisations in the same jurisdiction (Braadbaart, 2007; Lin & Berg, 2008). Regulatory models for water utilities focus on measuring business performance through a series of indicators (Braadbaart, 2007; Byatt, 2013; ...
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An exploratory approach for evaluating the energy and personnel share of operation and maintenance costs for water utilities in selected emerging economies of Europe
This study provides an analysis of specific performance indicators for water utilities in four countries, Albania, Hungary, Poland and Romania. The annual operational and staff cost indicators from records of the IBNET database have been analysed. Statistical analysis indicates significant differences between the fraction of energy and labour operational costs among the countries studied. Some ...
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Governance, strategy and efficiency of water utilities: the Italian case
The determinants of the performance of water utilities are a topical issue worldwide. This paper analyzes the relationship between efficiency and corporate governance in Italian water utilities, measured through data envelopment analysis. Using an M-quantile regression model, efficiency estimations are ranked considering relevant governance (board size and composition; firm size) and strategy ...
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Water sector regulation in small island developing states: an application to Cape Verde
Small island developing states (SIDs) present challenges for analysts and policy-makers who attempt to strengthen nationwide infrastructure. This study examines the case of one SID to illustrate how benchmarking can improve the performance of water utilities. The archipelago-nation of Cape Verde is characterized by severe water scarcity and relatively low income. These national characteristics ...
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Using performance indicators as a water loss management tool in developing countries
Water utilities in developing countries are facing the challenges of substantial water losses in their water supply systems. In order to deliver water to their customers more efficiently and effectively, utilities must be able to measure and assess the performance of their water supply systems against set management objectives. However, water loss assessment is still not widely practised in ...
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Performance of Portuguese water utilities: how do ownership, size, diversification and vertical integration relate to efficiency?
This research applies the stochastic frontier analysis benchmarking method to measure the performance of the water sector in Portugal. It estimates a multiproduct translog cost function in order to study the efficiency of the water and sewerage services, using an unbalanced panel comprising 68 Portuguese water utilities for the biennium 2004–2005. The sample is formed by concessionaire companies, ...
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