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"WATER SERVICES"
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Africa's water and sanitation infrastructure : access, affordability, and alternatives
The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has produced continent-wide analysis of many aspects of Africa's infrastructure challenge. The main findings were synthesized in a flagship report titled Africa's Infrastructure: a time for transformation, published in November 2009. Meant for policy makers, that report necessarily focused on the high-level conclusions. It attracted widespread media coverage feeding directly into discussions at the 2009 African Union Commission Heads of State Summit on Infrastructure. Although the flagship report served a valuable role in highlighting the main findings of the project, it could not do full justice to the richness of the data collected and technical analysis undertaken. There was clearly a need to make this more detailed material available to a wider audience of infrastructure practitioners. Hence the idea of producing four technical monographs, such as this one, to provide detailed results on each of the major infrastructure sectors, information and communication technologies (ICT), power, transport, and water, as companions to the flagship report. These technical volumes are intended as reference books on each of the infrastructure sectors. They cover all aspects of the AICD project relevant to each sector, including sector performance, gaps in financing and efficiency, and estimates of the need for additional spending on investment, operations, and maintenance. Each volume also comes with a detailed data appendix, providing easy access to all the relevant infrastructure indicators at the country level, which is a resource in and of itself.
eBook
The last drop : solving the world's water crisis
\"Water scarcity is the next big climate crisis. Water stress - not just scarcity, but also water-quality issues caused by pollution - is already driving the first waves of climate refugees. Rivers are drying out before they meet the oceans, and ancient lakes are disappearing. Fourteen of the world's twenty megacities are now experiencing water scarcity or drought conditions. It's increasingly clear that human mismanagement of water is dangerously unsustainable, for both ecological and human survival. And yet in recent years some key countries have been quietly and very successfully addressing water stress. How are Singapore and Israel, for example - both severely water-stressed countries - not in the same predicament as Chennai or California, but now boast surplus water? What can we learn from them and how can we use this knowledge to turn things around for the wider global community? Do we have to stop eating almonds and asparagus grown in the deserts of California and Peru? Could desalination of seawater be the answer? Or rainwater capture? Are some of the wilder 'solutions' - such as the plan to tow icebergs to Cape Town - pure madness, or necessary innovation? Award-winning environmental journalist Tim Smedley will travel the world to meet the experts, the victims, the activists and pioneers, to find out how we can mend the water table that our survival depends upon. His book will take an unblinking look at the current situation and how we got there. And then look to the solutions. The Last Drop promises to offer a fascinating, universally relevant account of the environmental and human factors that have led us to this point, and suggests practical ways in which we might address the crisis, before it's too late\"--Publisher's description.
Book
Comprehensive Regulation of Water Services. Why Quality of Service and Economic Costs Cannot be Considered Separately
Regulation in the water sector emerged as a formula to protect customers from the natural monopoly that conforms water and wastewater services. As there is little information about regulatory practices in the sector around the world, information has been collected though a survey sent to water regulators. The results of the survey provided enough information to understand how the different utilities’ behaviours are regulated and the methodologies used. Among all the behaviours to be regulated, economic and quality of service regulation emerge as key aspects from a technical point of view. The first one supervises utilities’ costs and tariffs while the second, the standards the service is provided. However, it has been detected that these aspects are regulated separately and the quality of service does not have an impact on economic regulation. This work quantifies the impact that the quality of services has on costs and the consequences derived from not considering it in the economic regulation. In addition, this study also lists all the different aspect of the quality of service with an impact on costs.
Journal Article
Hidden systems : water, electricity, the internet, and the secrets behind the systems we use every day
\"What was the first message sent over the internet? How much water does a single person use every day? How was the electric light invented? For every utility people use each day, there's a hidden history below the surface - a story of intrigue, drama, humor, and inequity. This graphic novel provides a guided tour through the science of the past - and how the decisions people made while inventing and constructing early technology still affect the way people use it today. Full of art, maps, and diagrams, Hidden Systems is a thoughtful, humorous exploration of the history of science, and what needs to be done now to change the future.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Berg Water Project
The past decade has witnessed a major global shift in thinking about water, including the role that water infrastructure plays in sustainable development. This rethinking aims to better balance the social, economic, and environmental performance aspects in the development and management of large dams. Additionally, it reinforces efforts to combat poverty by ensuring more equitable access to water and energy services. There is also growing appreciation of how broad-based policy reforms come into play and influence decisions around issues related to dams. Apart from democratization of the development process itself, it is increasingly recognized that infrastructure strategies must complement strategies for water, environment, and energy security; they must also address emerging concerns to reduce vulnerability in water resource systems due to the probability of climate change. Communication comes to the forefront in modern approaches to dam planning and management in several respects. Communication is central to multi-stakeholder dialogue and partnerships at all levels needed to achieve sustainability and governance reform in water resource management and infrastructure provision. At the same time, communication drives the advocacy to mobilize political will and public support for beneficial change and continuous improvement in practices. This case study emphasizes that it is important not only to mobilize all opportunities to reconcile water demand and supply in river basins facing increasing levels of water stress, but also to effectively integrate governance and anticorruption reforms and sustainability improvements into all stages of the planning and project cycle-adding value for all stakeholders, not just for some of them.
eBook
Water security assessment and driving mechanism in the ecosystem service flow condition
Water resources are the foundation of human survival and development. Thus, it is essential to quantify the relationship between water supply and demand and assess water security to ensure sustainable use of water resources. In this study, we quantified the relationship between water supply and demand in the Yiluo River Basin (YRB) using the InVEST model, constructed a spatial flow model of water provision service at the sub-watershed scale, and analyzed the water security index (WSI) under static and dynamic conditions. Subsequently, we used geographic detectors to identify the explanatory power of the main influencing factors of the WSI. The results showed that (1) from 2005 to 2018, the water supply decreased continuously and the water demand first increased and then decreased in the YRB; (2) the spatial pattern of WSI showed that it was high in the southwest and low in the northeast, wherein the highest and lowest WSI values occurred in 2005 and 2018, respectively. From 2005 to 2018, the mean values of the static and dynamic WSI decreased from 0.77 to 0.60 and 1.56 to 1.20, respectively. (3) The precipitation factor from the supply dimension and the gross domestic product (GDP) factor from the demand dimension had the strongest explanatory power for the static WSI. For the dynamic WSI, the flow quantity of the water provision service flow had the strongest explanatory power. This study provided a reference for governments to formulate sustainable water resource management.
Journal Article
Improving transparency, integrity, and accountability in water supply and sanitation
More than 1 billion people around the world live without access to safe, potable water, in part because of poor governance and corruption. Illegal connections and substantial losses caused by deferred maintenance have eroded the revenues of water utilities, leading to a downward spiral in performance. Embezzlement of funds, bribes for access to illegal water connections, manipulation of meter counters, and collusion in public contracts add to the litany of corrupt practices. 'Improving Transparency, Integrity, and Accountability in Water Supply and Sanitation' is a useful tool for diagnosing, analyzing, and remedying systemic corruption in the water supply and sanitation sectors. It will serve as a practical guide for governments; utility regulators, managers, and staff; civil society organizations; contractors; and citizens in their quest for a model of service provision that responds to the pressing needs of people in the developing world. The book aims to increase the involvement of civil society by engaging all stakeholders in setting priorities and monitoring performance; help water and sanitation delivery contribute to poverty reduction by increasing the service quality and coverage provided by service delivery organizations to poorer communities on an equitable basis; provide a tool that promotes the financial sustainability of service delivery organizations, thus building stakeholders' confidence in those institutions' ability to expand and improve service; and raise ethical standards among all stakeholders, especially service delivery organizations, thereby instilling a sense of public service in these organizations.
eBook
Evaluation of Water Social Service and Comprehensive Water Management Linked with Integrated River Evaluation
Various factors like climate change and population increase have limited water management evaluation. In South Korea particularly, although the management of water quality and water quantity has recently been integrated, a comprehensive policy has not yet been identified. This study, therefore, aims to propose a methodology for evaluating water social service for 18 basins near major water resources in South Korea. It aims to promote advanced water resource management, secure water equity, and improve inadequate policy implementation. In addition, it proposes a methodology for comprehensive water management evaluation linked with integrated river evaluation with respect to water quality and water quantity. Accordingly, contrary to the common assumption that the entire population has easy access to the supplied water, the status of water service was assessed objectively. The status of water management per sector was also visually represented, through which the vulnerabilities of water management could be intuitively diagnosed. Based on the possibility of utilizing the study results to determine the basic direction for water management, the methodology of this study has been proposed as a tool for establishing an efficient water management policy.
Journal Article
Are Frontier Efficiency Methods Adequate to Compare the Efficiency of Water Utilities for Regulatory Purposes?
Frontier efficiency methods have been recurrently used in the water sector to assess the performance of water utilities. These methods are also used for yardstick regulation, with greater efficiency being sought by creating competition between the utilities, which can have an impact on decision-making processes, such as tariff setting. This study analyzes the adequacy and limitations of these methods for regulatory purposes, particularly how they deal with data uncertainty and their capacity to manage large number of variables. In order to achieve this, two representative methods—a nonparametric technique (data envelopment analysis) and an econometric one (stochastic frontier analysis)—are applied to an audited sample of 194 water utilities. Results will show that the results from the methods may not be considered conclusive in the water sector and their application should be carried out with considerable reservations.
Journal Article