Baseline adjustment methodology in a shared water savings contract under serious drought conditions

Abstract

Baselines are often employed in shared water saving contracts for estimating water savings after some type of intervention by the water service company. An adjustment to the baseline may become necessary under certain conditions. Earlier work has described a number of relatively complex methods for baseline determination and adjustment, but application in regions faced with relatively limited data becomes problematic. If the adjustment were determined before finalising the contractual matters, it would be possible to gather the required data in order to determine the adjustment. However, in cases where no adjustment was fixed prior to the contract, a method is required to determine an adjustment mid-contract based on whatever data are available at the time. This paper presents a methodology for baseline adjustment in an existing shared water savings contract and explains how adjustment could be determined mid-contract, under conditions of limited data. The adjustment compensates for expected reduced water consumption due to external influences induced by serious water restrictions, typically introduced during periods of drought. The fundamental principle underpinning the baseline adjustment methodology presented in this paper involved segregating real water losses from the actual consumption of end-users, preferably by analysing the minimum night flow. In the absence of recorded night flows, an alternative procedure involving the minimum monthly consumption pre- and post-baseline was employed. The baseline adjustment method was subsequently applied in a South African case study, reported on separately. This technique is helpful because adjustments could be determined without adding unnecessary complexity or cost, and provides a means to resolve disputes in cases where unexpected savings occur mid-contract.

Optimization of Benefit Allocation in Contracted Water-Saving Projects Based on the Shapley Value Method

“…Wang and Lu [15] used energy management contracts to make a preliminary exploration of the CWSM mode and its operating mechanism. Recently, topics about baseline adjustment [9], water rights trading [6], and risk assessment [7,16] in CWSM projects have been studied.…”

“…is model invites WSSEs and funding agents to provide advanced watersaving technology and nancial support. It proposes a winwin approach to create bene ts for all stakeholders [9,10]. us, implementing CWSM projects would be a feasible choice to solve water-saving issues in colleges/university.…”

“…As for CWSM, research suggests that this mechanism was initiated in China in 2015 [6], and the standards were issued by China Standardization Administration in 2018 (for example, General Principles of Water Saving Management Contract Technology (GB/T 37149-2017)). Earlier studies have noted that numerous stakeholders could be involved in CWSM projects, and questions have been raised about the benefit allocation among the involved parties [7,9,11]. For the characteristics of colleges/universities in China (most of which are public universities), a reasonable benefit allocation mechanism can attract high-quality water-saving service enterprise (WSSE) and lead to successful CWSM projects.…”