Management evaluation of Water Users Associations using benchmarking techniques

J.I. Córcoles, J.A. de Juan, J.F. Ortega, J.M. Tarjuelo and M.A. Moreno

Agricultural Water Management, 2010, vol. 98, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: The development of different tools to evaluate the performance of Water Users Associations (WUAs) is an important practice for improving water and energy management, together with other production costs. One of these tools is the Benchmarking technique, which is based on the comparison between different WUAs to determine the best practices in each of them. In this paper, a Benchmarking process is applied to seven WUAs located in Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) during three irrigation seasons (2006-2008). The performance indicators developed by the International Programme for Technology and Research in Irrigation and Drainage (IPTRID) are used, while new indicators dealing with production and energy are proposed. The goals of this paper are to group WUAs with the same characteristics, using performance and energy indicators, and to reduce the set of indicators using statistical methods. The most important indicators, easy to obtain and yielding result in maximum information are retained for further use. Three proposals reducing the initial number of indicators were proposed, with an aim of being useful for future applications based on characterizing WUAs. Indicators results highlighted that irrigable areas can be grouped based on the application of drip irrigation systems and those with sprinkler irrigation systems. When using groundwater resources, no significant differences were observed for energy consumption between these irrigation systems. This can be explained by the indicator energy load index (ICE, m), which had similar values in all WUAs analyzed. According to annual irrigation water supply per unit irrigated area (VTSr, m3Â ha-1), the highest values (between 5200Â m3Â ha-1 and 6800Â m3Â ha-1) were obtained in WUAs with sprinkler irrigation systems, which contained crops characterized by high water requirements, compared to the VTSr (less than 1800Â m3Â ha-1) of WUAs with drip irrigation systems, with crops that required less volume of irrigation water. Regarding production efficiency indicators, in drip irrigation systems the high presence of vineyards, almond and olive trees, crops with low water requirements, explained high values of gross margin per unit irrigation delivery (MBVs, [euro]Â m-3)(close to 0.82Â [euro]Â m-3) in comparison with sprinkler irrigation systems (close to 0.36Â [euro]Â m-3).

Keywords: Performance; indicators; Benchmarking; Water; Users; Associations; Water; and; energy; management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-3774(10)00249-0
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:98:y:2010:i:1:p:1-11

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().