Developing a Framework for Measuring Water Supply Resilience

Balaei, Behrooz; Wilkinson, Suzanne; Potangaroa, Regan; Hassani, Nemat; Alavi, Maryam

doi:10.1061/(asce)nh.1527-6996.0000292

Cited by 53 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…A resilient organization directly contributes to the speedy and successful recovery of its community following a disaster (McManus, ). Organizational resilience has been considered a critical dimension for assessing the resilience of various systems, such as a community (Bruneau et al, ), multiple infrastructures (Vugrin, Warren, Ehlen, & Camphouse, ), transportation infrastructure (Hughes & Healy, ), and water supply (Balaei et al, ). The critical elements of organizational resilience are the ability to adapt, the need to detect the drift toward failure or weak signals, the organization's preoccupation with failure, and the level of organizational reliability (Lee et al, ).…”

Section: Measures Of Organizational Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ROR model developed by McManus () and improved by Resilient Organizations, a research and consulting group based in Christchurch, New Zealand, served as a starting point for developing the tool. Other frameworks (e.g., Hughes & Healy, ; Balaei et al, ) were also used during the process.…”

Section: Soliciting Expert Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A variety of technical, social, economic, and environmental problems affecting water supply organizations can also have an impact on the resilience of their systems and make them more vulnerable to the effects of flooding (Sweya, Wilkinson, & Chang‐Richard, ). Those issues also come into play when evaluating the resilience of water supply in case of an earthquake (Balaei, Wilkinson, Potangaroa, Hassani, & Alavi‐Shoshtari, ). In any instance of disaster, it is vital for organizations that are responsible for operating water supply infrastructure to ensure that services are uninterrupted.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developing a tool to measure the organizational resilience of Tanzania's water supply systems

Sweya¹,

Wilkinson²,

Kassenga³

et al. 2019

Glob Bus Org Exc

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Confronted with serious environmental challenges, water supply organizations in Tanzania struggle to prioritize and allocate resources to building resilience to floods so that they can provide uninterrupted service or resume services after a crisis in a timely manner. A study of the key indicators and principles of organizational resilience, combined with input from a panel of water industry experts, led to the development of a tool to gauge organizational resilience that was tested with data from a Tanzanian water authority. Awareness of environmental issues, having an emergency response plan in place, providing staff and the public with opportunities to learn more about building resiliency, clear and ongoing communications, and strong leadership emerged as the most important indicators for measuring the organizational resilience of water supply systems. Encompassing change readiness, leadership and culture, legal frameworks and institutional setup, and networks and relationships, the assessment tool that was developed can guide water authority managers worldwide in developing processes to ensure uninterrupted service to their communities.

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Section: Measures Of Organizational Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Soliciting Expert Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Developing a tool to measure the organizational resilience of Tanzania's water supply systems

Sweya¹,

Wilkinson²,

Kassenga³

et al. 2019

Glob Bus Org Exc

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Here we used criteria of performance based on the irrigation "water deficit" (i.e., the gap between renewable water availability and irrigation water use) to determine irrigation sustainability as the fraction of irrigation withdrawals contributing to water deficit (or "relative overuse"), the probability that in a given year no water deficit occurs (or "reliability"), and the likelihood of recovery from water deficit (or "resilience") as three criteria of performance for sustainable irrigation (Hazbavi and Sadeghi, 2017;Park and Um, 2018). Each indicator is evaluated considering both water (or "hydrologic") deficit and economic losses (Holling, 1973;Balaei et al, 2018). This work aims at providing a novel framework to analyse the sustainability of irrigation water use.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weak and Strong Sustainability of Irrigation: A Framework for Irrigation Practices Under Limited Water Availability

Borsato

Rosa

Marinello

et al. 2020

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Agriculture strongly relies on irrigation. While irrigated land accounts for roughly 20% of the global cultivated area, it contributes to about 40% of crop production. In the last few decades, the growing demand for agricultural commodities has translated into an increasing pressure on the global freshwater resources, often leading to their unsustainable use. Here we investigate the sustainability of irrigation, balancing farmers' profit generation objectives and the needs of ecological systems. We ask the question "sustainability of what?" to stress how the sustainability of irrigation is often evaluated with respect the opposing needs of humans and nature. While from the farmers' perspective irrigation is sustainable when it provides uninterrupted access to water resources at a price not exceeding the marginal revenue they generate (clearly without accounting for environmental externalities), from the standpoint of water resources, irrigation is sustainable if it does not deplete freshwater stocks or environmental flows. We invoke the notions of "weak" and "strong" sustainability to develop a novel framework for the evaluation of tradeoffs between human needs and the conservation of natural capital. Through the analysis of criteria of performance, we relate water deficit and irrigation overuse to the reliability and resilience of irrigation. This approach is applied to the case of Australia, a major agricultural country affected by water scarcity. The application of the framework to the case of Australia shows how this approach can be used to highlight areas in which irrigation contributes to a weakly sustainable use of water resources with impacts on environmental flows and groundwater stocks. Solutions, such as increasing efficiencies or reducing water applications through the adoption of deficit irrigation, can enhance water sustainability in some water scarce locations.

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“…The economic dimension includes economic factors driving the restoration process of urban infrastructures and recovery processes – before, during and after natural disasters – needing to be determined to select optimal resources allocation and preparedness measures right after an extreme event (Martinelli et al 2014 ). Researchers have shown the importance of economic factors and their measurements for the performance of infrastructures worldwide (Balaei et al 2018 ; Bhattacharya et al 2016 ; Bruneau et al 2003 ; De Bruijn et al 2017 ; Vugrin et al 2010 ) during disasters. However, the current global resilience gap is lacking the universal measurement tool for all systems, more so for economic patterns and their consequences differing in various systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tool development to measure the resilience of water supply systems in Tanzania: Economic dimension

Sweya

Wilkinson

2021

Jàmbá Journal of Disaster Risk Studies

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The world has experienced devastating disasters causing severe human life and economic losses, which is estimated to be 68.5% of the global economic losses between 2005 and 2017. Natural disasters are of great concern – they caused total damage of approximately $3.5 trillion during the past century – which is more than the global infrastructure development investment in 2014. Floods – exacerbated by climate change – are expected to cause more damages, and water supply infrastructures will continue to suffer if resilience is not improved. Measuring the economic changes affecting resilience would assist in developing risk reduction initiatives to minimise disaster losses. Such a measure is lacking for Tanzania water supply systems (WSSs). The current article applied three-stage processes – literature review, pre-assessment and Delphi technique – to develop a resilience tool to measure economic resilience for urban WSSs in Tanzania. Thematic and standard descriptive analyses were carried out during the study. Dynamism principle and three indicators – system investment proportionality, public–private partnership and cost recovery – emerged as principal components for the tool. The tool is expected to be useful during water authorities’ planning processes and budgeting in order to improve the overall WSSs resilience.

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Developing a Framework for Measuring Water Supply Resilience

Cited by 53 publications

References 27 publications

Developing a tool to measure the organizational resilience of Tanzania's water supply systems

Developing a tool to measure the organizational resilience of Tanzania's water supply systems

Weak and Strong Sustainability of Irrigation: A Framework for Irrigation Practices Under Limited Water Availability

Tool development to measure the resilience of water supply systems in Tanzania: Economic dimension

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