Assessment and enhancement of community water supply system sustainability: A dual framework approach

Le résumé fourni par la source

Population growth, pollution, and urbanization strain water sustainability, leading to the premature failure of community-managed water systems globally. This underscores the formidable task of precisely defining and quantifying sustainability within these community contexts. Based on the “You can't manage what you can't measure” adage, this study developed dual frameworks at community scale to assess and enhance the water supply system's sustainability. The assessment framework includes dimensions, indicators, and variables that convene into a Water Sustainability Index (WSI). WSI ranges from 1 to 4 where a score below 1.5 indicates poor water sustainability, while a score exceeding 3.5 signifies excellent sustainability. Likewise, the enhancement framework consists of dimensions, goals, and strategies. These frameworks relied on three specific dimensions, efficiency, resiliency, and community support. The identification of indicators, variables, and goals was based on SMART criteria. While the dimensions, indicators and goals are to remain consistent regardless of study areas, variables and strategies are site-specific and their selection needs to be based on each community's situations and data availability. The assessment framework suggested that the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) community has achieved fair water sustainability status with a score of 2.25. The strategic framework yielded several recommendations aimed at enhancing the sustainability of the water supply system at the AIT. The study's outcomes offer tools to evaluate the current situation of sustainability and assists local community authorities in devising solutions to enhance sustainability in community supply systems. Looking ahead, these frameworks lay the groundwork for future investigations, to explore localized, community-centric strategies for sustainable water management. • A novel dual-framework approach is developed for effective management of community-scale water supply systems. • SAFE-Comm framework for assessing and SENSE-Comm framework for enhancing community water supply systems were developed. • The dimensions, indicators, and variables of two frameworks were validated using SMART method. • The two developed frameworks are applied to the campus of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand. • The study identified state of AIT's water supply system and devised solutions to enhance its sustainability.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.