scholarly journals Perception Analysis of Potable Water Service to Users

10.29007/s3c1 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Patricia Hansen Rodríguez ◽  
José Manuel Rodríguez Varela ◽  
Edgar Antúnez Leyva ◽  
Jorge Arturo Casados Prior ◽  
Luis Gómez Lugo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Potable Water ◽  
Indicator System ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Water Service ◽  
Quality Perception ◽  
Utility Company ◽  
Management Indicators ◽  
Technology Institute

In Mexico, the regulatory framework does not obligate water utilities to report technical, administrative or financial information, nor are they required to have a management-indicator system to help them evaluate the service that they offer. In 2005 the Mexican Water Technology Institute (IMTA) started a voluntary participation program for tracking water utility management indicators (known as PIGOO for its Spanish initials) which has permitted participants to know what their own performance and evolution is. These results, however, do not represent what users think of the potable- water service so two additional studies were carried out to analyze the quality perception users have of their water-utility company. One permits the rating of the public image of the institution, that is to say, how a user is treated upon showing up in the offices to make a complaint or to file some procedure and another that evaluates the quality perception of the service that water utilities deliver to homes. These results will contribute towards identifying improvement areas in the service to users and the rating they give in turn, can help further the development and self-sustainability of water utilities.

scholarly journals A Simplified Method for Rapid Estimation of Emergency Water Supply Needs after Earthquakes

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 2635
Author(s):  
Joseph Toland ◽  
Anne Wein
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Potable Water ◽  
San Francisco Bay ◽  
Rapid Assessment ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Water Service ◽  
Earthquake Scenario ◽  
Simplified Method

Researchers are investigating the problem of estimating households with potable water service outages soon after an earthquake. Most of these modeling approaches are computationally intensive, have large proprietary data collection requirements or lack precision, making them unfeasible for rapid assessment, prioritization, and allocation of emergency water resources in large, complex disasters. This study proposes a new simplified analytical method—performed without proprietary water pipeline data—to estimate water supply needs after earthquakes, and a case study of its application in the HayWired earthquake scenario. In the HayWired scenario—a moment magnitude (Mw) 7.0 Hayward Fault earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, California (USA)—an analysis of potable water supply in two water utility districts was performed using the University of Colorado Water Network (CUWNet) model. In the case study, application of the simplified method extends these estimates of household water service outage to the nine counties adjacent to the San Francisco Bay, aggregated by a ~250 m2 (nine-arcsecond) grid. The study estimates about 1.38 million households (3.7 million residents) out of 7.6 million residents (2017, ambient, nighttime population) with potable water service outage soon after the earthquake—about an 8% increase from the HayWired scenario estimates.

Determining the optimal investment plan for water utilities: the case of Veolia Water Central

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-375
Author(s):  
Scott Reid ◽  
Ali Chalak ◽  
Jonathan Hecht
Keyword(s):  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Stated Preference ◽  
Optimal Investment ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Investment Planning ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Utility Company ◽  
Customer Preferences ◽  
Private And Public

Water utilities face difficult choices in how most efficiently to plan for investments that best meet the needs of their customer base. An obvious interest of water utilities is thus to optimise their investment planning to obtain the maximum possible benefits for the costs accrued by the investments. The objective of this article is to demonstrate an approach for a water utility to determine the benefits of investments in different possible service areas. We used a stated preference choice experiment approach to estimate the willingness-to-pay of customers of a utility company in Southeast England for various water services that are both private and public in nature. Using state-of-the-art econometric methods, we demonstrate how customer preferences can be estimated at the individual level, as opposed to more standard modelling approaches that assume that tastes are homogeneous among the customer population. Willingness-to-pay results were mostly statistically significant for the various private and public services presented to customers, and results conformed to the expectations of economic theory. We demonstrate how individual-level customer preferences can be used to forecast the preferred alternatives of customers when faced with different possible investment programmes. Lastly, we outline how various benefits and costs, including those captured by willingness-to-pay, are used to optimise the water utility's investment planning.

Benchmarking Risk Analysis Practice in the International Water Sector

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
B.H. MacGillivray ◽  
P.D. Hamilton ◽  
S.E. Hrudey ◽  
L. Reekie ◽  
S.J.T Pollard
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Risk Analysis ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Water Sector ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
The Usa ◽  
International Water ◽  
Practical Guidance ◽  
The Uk

Risk analysis in the water utility sector is fast becoming explicit. Here, we describe application of a capability model to benchmark the risk analysis maturity of a sub-sample of eight water utilities from the USA, the UK and Australia. Our analysis codifies risk analysis practice and offers practical guidance as to how utilities may more effectively employ their portfolio of risk analysis techniques for optimal, credible, and defensible decision making.

Modernization of the water utility company of Bogotá (Colombia): an example of public and private participation for solving management problems of water companies in developing countries

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
F. Zuleta ◽  
A. Merlano ◽  
A. Alvarez ◽  
M. Montoya ◽  
E. Restrepo
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Practical Case ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Comparative Efficiency ◽  
Utility Company ◽  
Private Participation ◽  
Management Problems ◽  
Water Companies

A common characteristic of water utility and wastewater companies in developing countries is management problems and limited commercial vocation. In the biggest Latin American cities there is a level of infrastructure enough for providing a substantially better service than the one currently supplied to their badly served customers. For years decisions have moved between two extremes: public management – usually corrupted with playing politics and inefficiency problems, and privatization – sharply criticized by many, and which has shown tendencies to inequality that leave it far away from earning panacea status. This paper is intended to expose the advantages of a novel model in which a state-run company with commercial management problems, the EAAB, solves its limitations by keeping the ownership of its assets and successfully incorporating the participation of better practices from other specialized operators, one of which is a state-owned player, EEPPM. This scheme demonstrates how the service indicators of a system serving eight million inhabitants in the Colombian capital improved significantly with state-owned assets and private participation, without giving in to privatization pressures or stagnating in the usual inefficiency typical of public management in developing countries. This is proposed as a replicable experience that can be used in medium and large cities in other countries with similar management problems, with certain adjustments to fit the solution to the specific cases. This is also a practical case for conducting a comparison of competitiveness within a city, of interest for regulatory entities and investigators on the potential of comparative efficiency in a traditionally monopolistic industry.

Socio economic influences on the restoration and maintenance of the water environment

1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Peter Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Water Environment ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Water Services ◽  
Economic Issue ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Influences ◽  
Mind Set

Protection of the water environment has become a modern socio economic issue in which the sociological pressures for a healthy water environment must be balanced with affordability. Reconciliation of these aspects requires clear political thinking and rigorous methodologies. It also requires a shift in mind-set which considers members of the public as customers. Water utilities are the major users of the water environment and potentially its greatest threat – so good delivery of water services is very important. The presentation addresses the topic through the experience of Anglian Water, a privatised water utility serving Eastern England.

scholarly journals How Perceptions of Trust, Risk, Tap Water Quality, and Salience Characterize Drinking Water Choices

Hydrology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Madeline A. Grupper ◽  
Madeline E. Schreiber ◽  
Michael G. Sorice
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
Anthropogenic Impacts ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
The Public ◽  
Water Behavior

Provision of safe drinking water by water utilities is challenged by disturbances to water quality that have become increasingly frequent due to global changes and anthropogenic impacts. Many water utilities are turning to adaptable and flexible strategies to allow for resilient management of drinking water supplies. The success of resilience-based management depends on, and is enabled by, positive relationships with the public. To understand how relationships between managers and communities spill over to in-home drinking water behavior, we examined the role of trust, risk perceptions, salience of drinking water, and water quality evaluations in the choice of in-home drinking water sources for a population in Roanoke Virginia. Using survey data, our study characterized patterns of in-home drinking water behavior and explored related perceptions to determine if residents’ perceptions of their water and the municipal water utility could be intuited from this behavior. We characterized drinking water behavior using a hierarchical cluster analysis and highlighted the importance of studying a range of drinking water patterns. Through analyses of variance, we found that people who drink more tap water have higher trust in their water managers, evaluate water quality more favorably, have lower risk perceptions, and pay less attention to changes in their tap water. Utility managers may gauge information about aspects of their relationships with communities by examining drinking water behavior, which can be used to inform their future interactions with the public, with the goal of increasing resilience and adaptability to external water supply threats.

The same deep water as you? The impact of alternative governance arrangements of water service delivery on efficiency

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Rodrigues ◽  
António F Tavares
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Authority ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Switching Regression ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Utility Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Switching Regression Models ◽  
Governance Arrangements

This work contributes to the literature on water governance by attempting to provide an answer to the question of what are the differences in efficiency of alternative governance arrangements of water utilities. We test hypotheses derived from property rights, principal–agent, and transaction costs theories using a comprehensive database of 260 water utility systems provided by the Portuguese Regulatory Authority of Water and Waste Services. Using endogenous switching regression models estimated through maximum likelihood, the study is designed in two steps. First, we investigate differences in efficiency between in-house options and externalization and find that in-house solutions as a set (direct provision and municipal companies) are more efficient than externalization options (mixed companies and concessions). Second, we test differences in efficiency within both in-house and externalization solutions, and fail to find statistically significant differences in efficiency between in-house bureaucracies and municipal companies and between mixed companies and concessions.

Rationality, accounting and benchmarking water businesses

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Pawsey ◽  
Jayanath Ananda ◽  
Zahirul Hoque
Keyword(s):  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Fair Value ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Capital Input ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Dea Models ◽  
Future Work

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the sensitivity of economic efficiency rankings of water businesses to the choice of alternative physical and accounting capital input measures. Design/methodology/approach Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to compute efficiency rankings for government-owned water businesses from the state of Victoria, Australia, over the period 2005/2006 through 2012/2013. Differences between DEA models when capital inputs were measured using either: statutory accounting values (historic cost and fair value), physical measures, or regulatory accounting values, were scrutinised. Findings Depending on the choice of capital input, significant variation in efficiency scores and the ranking of the top (worst) performing firms was observed. Research limitations/implications Future research may explore the generalisability of findings to a wider sample of water utilities globally. Future work can also consider the most reliable treatment of capital inputs in efficiency analysis. Practical implications Regulators should be cautious when using economic efficiency data in benchmarking exercises. A consistent approach to account for the capital stock is needed in the determination of price caps and designing incentives for poor performers. Originality/value DEA has been widely used to explore the role of ownership structure, firm size and regulation on water utility efficiency. This is the first study of its kind to explore the sensitivity of DEA to alternative physical and accounting capital input measures. This research also improves the conventional performance measurement in water utilities by using a bootstrap procedure to address the deterministic nature of the DEA approach.

Energy Benchmarking of Water and Wastewater Treatment, Distribution and Collection: A Case Study of Austin Water Utility

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill B. Kjellsson ◽  
David Greene ◽  
Raj Bhattarai ◽  
Michael E. Webber
Keyword(s):  
Water Distribution ◽  
Energy Intensity ◽  
Potable Water ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Operating Cost ◽  
Electric Energy ◽  
Water And Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Water And Wastewater

Nationally, 4% of electricity usage goes towards moving and treating water and wastewater. The energy intensity of the water and wastewater utility sector is affected by many factors including water source, water quality, and the distance and elevation that water must be transported. Furthermore, energy accounts for 10% or more of a utility’s total operating cost, suggesting that energy savings can account for significant cost savings. Better knowledge of where and when energy is used could support strategic energy interventions and reveal opportunities for efficiency. Accordingly, this investigation quantifies energy intensity by process and type, including electricity and natural gas, and explores the time-varying nature of electric energy consumption for potable water distribution using the Austin Water Utility (AWU) in Austin, Texas as a case study. This research found that most of energy consumed by the AWU is for pumping throughout the distribution network (57%) and at lift stations (10%) while potable water treatment accounts for the least (5%). Though the focus is site specific, the methodology shown herein can be applied to other utilities with sufficient data.

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