Against the background of drastically rising global water demand and increasing pollution and overexploitation of regional water resources, the demand-driven water supply of households and industry is of central importance. Water reuse and desalination are seen as key technologies to overcome potential regional and local water shortage. In the joint projects funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) ‘Future-oriented Technologies and Concepts to Increase Water Availability by Water Reuse and Desalination (WavE)’, evaluation approaches for analysing innovative technologies and concepts are being developed and assessed. All evaluation methods and criteria used were selected based on the decision situation at hand and the decision-makeŕs preferences. Based on the analysis of six multi-criteria evaluation concepts used in selected WavE projects, this paper presents a general approach for comparative multi-criteria evaluation of water reuse systems consisting of prerequisites, minimum requirements, evaluation criteria (qualitative, semi-quantitative or quantitative) and a final aggregation of results. Exemplary sets of criteria for the application in a more industrial, municipal and/or international context are presented as an aid for the application of holistic evaluation approaches for (process) concept and technology selection in the context of water reuse and desalination.
AbstractThe expansion of water-intensive industrial activities and the impacts of climate change are jeopardising the sufficiency of safe drinking water in several Southeast Asian countries. One is Viet Nam, where geogenic arsenic contamination further limits the availability of freshwater resources with a simultaneous increase in water demand. Innovative and sustainable water treatment technologies are required to meet these challenges. Complementarily, we assume that the provision of safe drinking water requires tailored business models (BMs). In this study, we focus on the key stakeholders and framework conditions to design tailored BMs providing safe drinking water to the low-income and middle-income population in Viet Nam. We consider decentralised technologies to be suitable due to their lower investment costs for implementation and the avoidance of strong path dependencies. We therefore conducted a literature review and interviews with international experts in the domain of decentralised water treatment technologies. Our results show that relevant aspects include a lack of financial resources, specific characteristics associated with Vietnamese culture, e.g. the importance of relationships and trust in the business domain, lack of education and vocational training, market saturation suggesting co-operation with existing water suppliers, lack of suitable partners, and deficiencies in the institutional environment.
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