Consistency in efficiency benchmarking: urban water utility regulation with performance improvement

Conflict Resolution : Benchmarking Water Utility Performance

The water sector has economic and symbolic importance for citizens in developing countries. Water utility benchmarking is no panacea for improving water sector performance. Nevertheless, it can contribute to addressing four sources of conflict in the design and implementation of policies: cognitive conflicts (based on technical disagreements regarding how data might be analyzed and interpreted)...

Sustainable urban water supply in south India: Desalination, efficiency improvement, or rainwater harvesting?

[1] Indian megacities face severe water supply problems owing to factors ranging from growing population to high municipal pipe leakage rates; no Indian city provides 24/7 water supply. Current approaches to addressing the problem have been “utility centric,” overlooking the significance of decentralized activities by consumers, groundwater extraction via private wells, and aquifer recharge by ...

Performance Benchmarking Analysis of Japanese Water Utilities

Although the Japanese water sector is economically and socially important, few empirical studies are available to help analysts and policy-makers understand the performance patterns in the industry. This study applies non-parametric methods to 5,538 observations on 1144 utilities that supplied drinking water between 2004 and 2007. With a comprehensive census of utilities, the present study cont...

Incentive Regulation and Utility Benchmarking for Electricity Network Security

The incentive regulation of costs related to physical and cyber security in electricity networks is an important but relatively unexplored and ambiguous issue. These costs can be part of a cost efficiency benchmarking or alternatively dealt separately. This paper discusses the issues and proposes on the options for incorporating network security costs within incentive regulation in a benchmarki...

Efficiency of urban water detention methods in downstream cities