The efficiency of public services in small municipalities: The case of drinking water supply

Benito, Bernardino; Faura, Úrsula; Guillamón, María‐Dolores; Ríos, Ana‐María

doi:10.1016/j.cities.2019.04.016

Cited by 41 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 65 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Refs [15][16][17][18][19] provide a detailed literature review on the topic of efficiency in water resource management. Moreover, some studies are also focused on Spain [20][21][22][23][24][25]. The inefficiencies associated with restrictions on the use of water, investments, and current price agreements lead to problems connected to the deterioration of water quality and the infrastructures, and the increase in access costs [16] affecting the citizens' well-being.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Efficiency in the Spanish Clean Water and Sanitation Sector

2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent years, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is becoming a major challenge for local governments. This research focuses on the role of Spanish local governments in the fulfillment of SDG-6, which aims to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all citizens. Specifically, this study analyses the evolution of the efficiency of Spanish local governments, and its determining factors, in the achievement of the SDG-6. The results indicate that the taxes associated with water supply and sanitation services, the private management of these services, population density, local government budget revenues, the income of the inhabitants of the municipality and the fragmentation of local governments are factors that can improve the evolution of the efficiency of Spanish local governments in achieving the SDG-6.Sustainability 2020, 12, 3015 2 of 13 debate on the efficiency in the management of water resources, which has become even more relevant with Agenda 2030 and, in particular, in relation to SDG-6. In this regard, measuring the evolution of the efficiency in the provision of water supply and sanitation services, and identifying how it can be improved to achieve SDG-6, is a further step towards the prosperity of the planet and people. However, despite the relevance of the topic, previous studies have investigated the efficiency of local governments in the provision of drinking water through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and regression models. These approaches do not allow the measurement of inter-annual efficiency. In light of this, there is a clear need for more advanced methodologies capable of enabling a better understanding of the phenomenon. In this regard, our study aims to fill this important gap by using a different approach, represented by the Malmquist index (inter-annual evolution of efficiency) and a truncated regression model. In fact, this methodology allows an assessment of the inter-annual evolution of the efficiency of Spanish local governments in relation to the resources used to achieve SDG-6.Regarding the analysis of the determinants, this study investigates the impact of the characteristics of the service and the demographic, economic, and political factors of the municipality represented by taxes, type of management, population density, level of tourism, citizens' income, political ideology and political strength of the government.The structure of this study is organized as follows. After this introduction, we review the literature analyzing the relevance of SDGs and the determinants of efficiency in water supply and sanitation. Section 3 presents the methodology, referring to the sample, variables, and econometric model. Section 4 presents the results and discussion. Finally, in Section 5, we draw the main conclusions and implications of our findings, the limitations of the study, and the directions for further research. Literature Review

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Efficiency in the Spanish Clean Water and Sanitation Sector

2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Improve the efficiency of public service [ 19 ] through this algorithm in Figure 9 .where ABC is the regression coefficient.…”

Section: Analysis On the Present Situation Of Urban Sports Public Servicementioning

confidence: 99%

Recognition and Optimization Analysis of Urban Public Sports Facilities Based on Intelligent Image Processing

2021

Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the utilization of urban public facilities, it is found that the number of people under 18 years who exercise accounts for 29.5% of the total number of people surveyed, 32.8% between 18 and 65 years, and 37.7% over 65 years. The elderly have become the main population of public facilities, and the aging of cities is becoming more and more obvious. Strengthening the construction and development of urban public facilities has become the main work of current urban construction, and planning public facilities can effectively alleviate the pressure of urban public facilities. Through image recognition to promote urban sports public service, we improve the management efficiency of urban sports public service, facilitate residents' sports, and improve residents' satisfaction and happiness index. Through image recognition to manage portraits and objects, the safety of residents' sports and sports facilities is guaranteed, and the management efficiency is improved. The experimental results show that R-CNN, FAST R-CNN, and Faster R-CNN in urban public facilities can be intelligently recognized by image recognition technology for comparison. Faster R-CNN has good accuracy and low average time. Finally, the study analyzes the service cost of public facilities, compared with traditional public services, with the application of public services under image recognition, so as to guide different groups of people to make full use of public service facilities to improve their quality of life and realize the good behavior of the national movement.

show abstract

“…Recent studies have used complex variants of the DEA, such as super-efficiency (e.g., to investigate the potential for efficiency improvement [4]), DEA-scale efficiency (e.g., to examine the efficiency of leakage-management [14]); DEA model with statistical tolerance (e.g., to assess the efficiency of water and sewerage companies (WaSCs) [38]); shared input data envelopment analysis model (e.g., to separately measure the efficiency when the same operator delivers more than one service, as water and wastewater services [39]); the directional metadistance function (e.g., to revisit the relationship between ownership and performance [13]; Bootstrap DEA (e.g., to identify the determinants of efficiency of water provision services [40,41] or to evaluate the influence of the management nature (private vs. public) on efficiency [10]); DEA double bootstrap (e.g., to overcome the limitation of deterministic method that does not allow identifying environmental factors influencing efficiency scores [42]); the DEA-based approach on Directional Distance Function (DDF) (e.g., to measure the performance of the integrated production of desirable and undesirable outputs [43]); or Network DEA models (e.g., to overcome the shortcomings of the standard AED for relative performance assessment (which do not allow setting clear guidelines for improvement) [44]).…”

Section: Literature Analysing Efficiency and Productivity In Water Supply: Dea Specificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Efficiency of Water Distribution Network Sectors Using the DEA-Weight Russell Directional Distance Model: The Case of the City of Valencia (Spain)

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In many cities, sectorization projects of the drinking water distribution network have been implemented. This study provides a methodology to evaluate the efficiency of the sectors of a water distribution network by applying a data envelopment analysis weighted Russell directional distance (DEA-WRDD) model. This non-radial DEA model gives the overall efficiency of each unit of analysis, as well as each input, output, and undesirable output considered in the evaluation. The variables used in the analysis provide a multidisciplinary view: economic factors (covering costs), water quality parameters, and technical aspects. The empirical analysis was performed for the sectors of the water distribution network of the city of Valencia (Spain) for the year 2016. In this particular case, the results showed that approximately half of the sectors were efficient. The efficiency values of each variable indicate that the main challenges (faced by the water distribution company) were the optimization of maintenance costs and the reduction of leaks, both of which have an impact on the quality of the distributed water. So, the purpose of this article is to highlight the usefulness of efficiency analysis to help the decision making of managers of sectorized water distribution networks so that they can optimize the management.

show abstract

The efficiency of public services in small municipalities: The case of drinking water supply

Cited by 41 publications

References 65 publications

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Efficiency in the Spanish Clean Water and Sanitation Sector

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Efficiency in the Spanish Clean Water and Sanitation Sector

Recognition and Optimization Analysis of Urban Public Sports Facilities Based on Intelligent Image Processing

Evaluating the Efficiency of Water Distribution Network Sectors Using the DEA-Weight Russell Directional Distance Model: The Case of the City of Valencia (Spain)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About