Quantitative studies of water and sanitation utilities: a benchmarking literature survey

Water Policy ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 591-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Berg ◽  
R. Marques
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Literature Survey ◽  
Production Functions ◽  
Water And Sanitation ◽  
Sanitation Services ◽  
External Regulation ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
Power Of Incentives ◽  
Over Time

This paper performs a literature update of quantitative studies of water and sanitation services (WSS), with an emphasis on tracking the benchmarking literature. There are 190 studies which use cost or production functions to evaluate the performance of WSS utilities. The studies examine: (1) the scale, scope or density economies of utilities in a particular country or region; (2) the influence of ownership on efficiency; (3) the existence and power of incentives associated with different governance systems (including external regulation); and (4) performance assessment (benchmarking). In addition, this paper presents patterns regarding quantitative methods adopted over time, as well as some major trends in results.

Water and sanitation policies for improving health in South Africa: overcoming the institutional legacy of apartheid

Water Policy ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 627-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edina Sinanovic ◽  
Sandi Mbatsha ◽  
Stephen Gundry ◽  
Jim Wright ◽  
Clas Rehnberg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
The South ◽  
Financing System ◽  
Water And Sanitation ◽  
Sanitation Services ◽  
Sanitation And Hygiene ◽  
Access To Water ◽  
New Policies

The burden of water-related disease is closely related to both the socio-economic situation and public health issues like access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene services. Poverty eradication, through improved access to water and sanitation, is the South African government's major priority. This is partly achieved through subsidising the cost of water and sanitation provision to the poor in rural areas. Whilst the new policies have made a remarkable impact on improved access to water and sanitation services, a general problem since the new approach in 1994 has been the lack of integration of policies for water and sanitation and health. This paper analyses the policies concerning rural water supply and sanitation in South Africa. It considers the structure of institutions, the division of responsibilities and legislated and financial capacity of the South Africa's water sector. A more integrated approach for the policies aiming at water access, sanitation and health is needed. In addition, as the local government's capacity to implement different programmes is limited, a review of the financing system is necessary.

scholarly journals Ordering global governance complexes: The evolution of the governance complex for international civil aviation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Civil Aviation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
Governance Effectiveness ◽  
Political Agents ◽  
Over Time

AbstractMany observers worry that growing numbers of international institutions with overlapping functions undermine governance effectiveness via duplication, inconsistency and conflict. Such pessimistic assessments may undervalue the mechanisms available to states and other political agents to reduce conflictual overlap and enhance inter-institutional synergy. Drawing on historical data I examine how states can mitigate conflict within Global Governance Complexes (GGCs) by dissolving or merging existing institutions or by re-configuring their mandates. I further explore how “order in complexity” can emerge through bottom-up processes of adaptation in lieu of state-led reform. My analysis supports three theoretical claims: (1) states frequently refashion governance complexes “top-down” in order to reduce conflictual overlap; (2) “top-down” restructuring and “bottom-up” adaptation present alternative mechanisms for ordering relations among component institutions of GGCs; (3) these twin mechanisms ensure that GGCs tend to (re)produce elements of order over time–albeit often temporarily. Rather than evolving towards ever-greater fragmentation and disorder, complex governance systems thus tend to fluctuate between greater or lesser integration and (dis)order.

scholarly journals The how tough is WASH framework for assessing the climate resilience of water and sanitation

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Howard ◽  
Anisha Nijhawan ◽  
Adrian Flint ◽  
Manish Baidya ◽  
Maria Pregnolato ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Water And Sanitation ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Sanitation Services ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Measurement Framework ◽  
Low And Middle Income

AbstractClimate change presents a major threat to water and sanitation services. There is an urgent need to understand and improve resilience, particularly in rural communities and small towns in low- and middle-income countries that already struggle to provide universal access to services and face increasing threats from climate change. To date, there is a lack of a simple framework to assess the resilience of water and sanitation services which hinders the development of strategies to improve services. An interdisciplinary team of engineers and environmental and social scientists were brought together to investigate the development of a resilience measurement framework for use in low- and middle-income countries. Six domains of interest were identified based on a literature review, expert opinion, and limited field assessments in two countries. A scoring system using a Likert scale is proposed to assess the resilience of services and allow analysis at local and national levels to support improvements in individual supplies, identifying systematic faults, and support prioritisation for action. This is a simple, multi-dimensional framework for assessing the resilience of rural and small-town water and sanitation services in LMICs. The framework is being further tested in Nepal and Ethiopia and future results will be reported on its application.

scholarly journals Investigating genre distinctions through discourse distance and discourse network

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Sun ◽  
Rong Wang ◽  
Wenxin Xiong
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Quantitative Method ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Structure Theory ◽  
Network Data ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Discourse Units ◽  
Syntactic Dependency

Abstract The notion of genre has been widely explored using quantitative methods from both lexical and syntactical perspectives. However, discourse structure has rarely been used to examine genre. Mostly concerned with the interrelation of discourse units, discourse structure can play a crucial role in genre analysis. Nevertheless, few quantitative studies have explored genre distinctions from a discourse structure perspective. Here, we use two English discourse corpora (RST-DT and GUM) to investigate discourse structure from a novel viewpoint. The RST-DT is divided into four small subcorpora distinguished according to genre, and another corpus (GUM) containing seven genres are used for cross-verification. An RST (rhetorical structure theory) tree is converted into dependency representations by taking information from RST annotations to calculate the discourse distance through a process similar to that used to calculate syntactic dependency distance. Moreover, the data on dependency representations deriving from the two corpora are readily convertible into network data. Afterwards, we examine different genres in the two corpora by combining discourse distance and discourse network. The two methods are mutually complementary in comprehensively revealing the distinctiveness of various genres. Accordingly, we propose an effective quantitative method for assessing genre differences using discourse distance and discourse network. This quantitative study can help us better understand the nature of genre.

Comparing Student Attitudes to Spreadsheet and Advanced Statistical Packages

2020 ◽  
pp. 009862832097726
Author(s):  
Angela R. Surrusco ◽  
Zachary J. Kunicki ◽  
Sarah L. DiPerri ◽  
Marie C. Tate ◽  
Megan M. Risi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Student Attitudes ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Student Attitude ◽  
Methods Course ◽  
Microsoft Excel ◽  
Time Points ◽  
Over Time

The statistical package chosen to aid in teaching quantitative methods is at the instructor’s discretion, but little research has investigated student attitude toward these different packages. This study compared Google Sheets, a spreadsheet package similar to Microsoft Excel, and a traditional package, SPSS, to determine which of the two programs students preferred to use. One hundred and thirty-nine students enrolled in a quantitative methods course completed surveys at the middle and end of the semester during Spring 2016 and Fall 2016. The results suggested Google Sheets was preferred to SPSS at both time points, and attitudes toward Google Sheets improved over time. Further research could investigate the perspectives of students in other levels of experience with statistics and other statistical packages.

Long-Run Effects in Dynamic Systems: New Tools for Cross-Lagged Panel Models

2021 ◽  
pp. 109442812199322
Author(s):  
Ali Shamsollahi ◽  
Michael J. Zyphur ◽  
Ozlem Ozkok
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Dynamic Systems ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Simulated Dataset ◽  
Impulse Responses ◽  
Panel Models ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Short Run ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Over Time

Cross-lagged panel models (CLPMs) are common, but their applications often focus on “short-run” effects among temporally proximal observations. This addresses questions about how dynamic systems may immediately respond to interventions, but fails to show how systems evolve over longer timeframes. We explore three types of “long-run” effects in dynamic systems that extend recent work on “impulse responses,” which reflect potential long-run effects of one-time interventions. Going beyond these, we first treat evaluations of system (in)stability by testing for “permanent effects,” which are important because in unstable systems even a one-time intervention may have enduring effects. Second, we explore classic econometric long-run effects that show how dynamic systems may respond to interventions that are sustained over time. Third, we treat “accumulated responses” to model how systems may respond to repeated interventions over time. We illustrate tests of each long-run effect in a simulated dataset and we provide all materials online including user-friendly R code that automates estimating, testing, reporting, and plotting all effects (see https://doi.org/10.26188/13506861 ). We conclude by emphasizing the value of aligning specific longitudinal hypotheses with quantitative methods.

Securing 2020 vision for 2030: climate change and ensuring resilience in water and sanitation services

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Howard ◽  
Katrina Charles ◽  
Kathy Pond ◽  
Anca Brookshaw ◽  
Rifat Hossain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Water And Sanitation ◽  
Sanitation Services ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Management Approaches ◽  
Sanitation Systems ◽  
Water Supply And Sanitation

Drinking-water supply and sanitation services are essential for human health, but their technologies and management systems are potentially vulnerable to climate change. An assessment was made of the resilience of water supply and sanitation systems against forecast climate changes by 2020 and 2030. The results showed very few technologies are resilient to climate change and the sustainability of the current progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) may be significantly undermined. Management approaches are more important than technology in building resilience for water supply, but the reverse is true for sanitation. Whilst climate change represents a significant threat to sustainable drinking-water and sanitation services, through no-regrets actions and using opportunities to increase service quality, climate change may be a driver for improvements that have been insufficiently delivered to date.

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