A Systems Analysis Approach to Identifying Critical Success Factors in Drinking Water Source Protection Programs

Abstract

The success of source protection in ensuring safe drinking water is centered around being able to understand the hazards present in the catchment then plan and implement control measures to manage water quality risk to levels which can be controlled through downstream barriers. The programs in place to manage source protection are complex sociotechnical systems involving policy, standards, regulators, technology, human factors and so on. This study uses System Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) to analyze the operational hazards of a typical drinking water source protection (DWSP) program and identify control measures to ensure safe operations. To validate the results a questionnaire was developed and distributed to specialists in DWSP in Taiwan, Australia and Greece. Using Principle Components Analysis (PCA) of the questionnaire responses, the study identified four critical success factors (CSFs) for DWSP. The four factors identified are ‘Policy and Government Agency Support of Source Protection’, ‘Catchment Risk Monitoring and Information’, ‘Support of Operational Field Activities’ and ‘Response to Water Quality Threats’. The results of this study provide insight into the approach of grouping of source protection measures to identify a series of targeted CSF for operational source protection programs. Using CSF can aide catchment management agencies in ensuring that the risk level in the catchment is managed effectively and that threats to public health from drinking water are managed appropriately.

Development of a framework for assessing the robustness of drinking water source protection programmes using critical success factors

“…The proposed scoring framework for DWSP programmes robustness primarily uses the perceptions of DWSP experts and professionals on the importance of the control measures for the hazards involved in managing DWSP programmes from Merrett et al (2019). These perceptions were then analysed further to develop a set of weighted scores for each of the CSFs and PHCs.…”

“…Therefore, the focus was placed on establishing the individual weights for the PHCs. The final weightings were established based on a normalised matrix of the average importance values of the 20 PHCs identified in Merrett et al (2019). The weightings from the normalised matrix were then applied to the DWSP professional responses of using a simple additive weighting method (SAWM) to assign the weighted scores for the individual PHCs.…”

“…At the time the experts were surveyed on the perceived importance of the selected PHCs for Merrett et al (2019), there was simultaneous questionnaire that captured their perceptions of how well they believed that relevant agencies they have knowledge of were able to achieve the intent of the PHC. The respondents were instructed to rank the questions based on their perceptions of the performance of responsible agencies involved in DWSP in meeting the intent of each PHC.…”

“…This study aims to develop a performance assessment scoresheet for DWSP programmes based on factors related to the performance of DWSP programmes. The performance criteria are based on critical success factors (CSFs) and process hazard controls (PHCs) taken from Merrett et al (2019). The study completed by Merrett et al (2019) established CSFs for DWSP programmes using 20 PHCs.…”

“…The performance criteria are based on critical success factors (CSFs) and process hazard controls (PHCs) taken from Merrett et al (2019). The study completed by Merrett et al (2019) established CSFs for DWSP programmes using 20 PHCs. The PHCs represent groups of programme level measures to address process hazards that can limit the effectiveness of DWSP programmes.…”