A multi-component enhanced Russell measure of efficiency: With application to water supply plans

Hasan Farmani Entezam, Farzad Movahedi Sobhani, Seyed Esmaeil Najafi and Israfil Roshdi ()

Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 2020, vol. 70, issue C

Abstract: Public water providers aim at developing a water supply plan (WSP) that not only provides a reliable and satisfactory level of service but also is efficient in terms of performance. This paper deals with evaluating the performance of WSPs within the framework of multi-component data envelopment analysis. Specifically, we consider the overall performance of each WSP as a decision making unit (DMU) so that economic, social, hygienic, technological, managerial and environmental performances of the WSP make up independent components of the defined DMU. To assess the performance of a set of WPSs, we propose a multi-component enhanced Russell measure of efficiency that takes all sources of inefficiency into account. We show that the proposed measure can be decomposed into individual efficiency measures at component level. This decomposition much enhances the efficiency of computing the proposed measure, noting the fact that this measure is obtained by solving a single linear program. It also guarantees the proposed measure to inherit two important—unit invariance and strong monotonicity—properties of the conventional enhanced Russell measure. In our empirical study, we apply our model to evaluate the efficiency of 10 urban WSPs in Qom city of Iran. In line with experts’ practical opinions, our findings reveal that the (relatively) most efficient WSP is to construct a potable water network and separation of non-drinking water network for urban usage.

Keywords: Multi-component data envelopment analysis; Enhanced Russell measure; Efficiency; Water supply plan; Performance evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceps:v:70:y:2020:i:c:s0038012119300667

DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2019.06.004

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