Governance of the Water Supply Systems in the Palestinian Territories: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach to the Management of Water Resources

This study demonstrates that data envelopment analysis (DEA) can be a useful tool to assess the relative efficiencies of water supply systems and to establish benchmarks with which to measure progress in the management of water resources. Frontier efficiency models measure the efficiency of water use in the Palestinian Territories (West Bank and the Gaza Strip). At the municipality level, sufficient data for the years 1999-2002 were available to estimate efficiency and stability scores. The Gaza Strip efficiency scores were considerably lower than those of the West Bank. Water losses were the major source of the inefficiency as indicated by the large slacks of this input. The relative sizes of the municipalities affect efficiency scores little. Palestinian policy makers should focus on rebuilding the infrastructure of the water networks, beginning with the most DEA inefficient municipalities in order to minimize water losses.

[1]  R. Raab,et al.  Identifying Subareas that Comprise a Greater Metropolitan Area: The Criterion of County Relative Efficiency , 2002 .

[2]  A. Charnes,et al.  Data Envelopment Analysis Theory, Methodology and Applications , 1995 .

[3]  Abdulla Ali Al‐Ibrahim.  Water Use in Saudi Arabia: Problems and Policy Implications , 1990 .

[4]  W. Wood.  A Fresh Water Odyssey: Some Observations on the Global Resource , 2003, Ground water.

[5]  Richard Franceys,et al.  Efficiency of Water-Supply and Sanitation Projects in Ghana , 1995 .

[6]  Boaz Golany,et al.  Foundations of data envelopment analysis for Pareto-Koopmans efficient empirical production functions , 1985 .

[7]  William W. Cooper,et al.  Evaluating Water Supply Services in Japan with RAM: a Range-adjusted Measure of Inefficiency , 1998 .

[8]  Emmanuel Thanassoulis,et al.  The use of data envelopment analysis in the regulation of UK water utilities: Water distribution , 2000, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[9]  L. Seiford,et al.  Data Envelopment Analysis in the Presence of Both Quantitative and Qualitative Factors , 1996 .

[10]  Marwan Haddad.  Planning water supply under complex and changing political conditions: Palestine as a case study , 1998 .

[11]  Chandler Stolp,et al.  Strengths and weaknesses of data envelopment analysis : an urban and regional perspective , 1990 .

[12]  A. Charnes,et al.  Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis , 1984 .

[13]  篠原 正明,et al.  William W.Cooper,Lawrence M.Seiford,Kaoru Tone 著, DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS : A Comprehensive Text with Models, Applications, References and DEA-Solver Software, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000年, 318頁 , 2002 .

[14]  T. Gray,et al.  Water Politics in the Middle East , 2000 .

[15]  Hsihui Chang,et al.  Health care regulation and the operating efficiency of hospitals: Evidence from Taiwan , 2004 .

[16]  W. Cooper,et al.  Data Envelopment Analysis: A Comprehensive Text with Models, Applications, References and DEA-Solver Software , 1999 .

[17]  John Cubbin,et al.  Regression versus data envelopment analysis for efficiency measurement: an application to the England and Wales regulated water industry , 1998 .

[18]  William W. Cooper,et al.  Introduction to Data Envelopment Analysis and Its Uses: With Dea-Solver Software and References , 2005 .

[19]  L. R. Howson.  Unaccounted for Water , 1928 .

[20]  Emmanuel Thanassoulis,et al.  Comparative performance measurement in regulation: the case of English and Welsh sewerage services , 2002, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[21]  Emmanuel Thanassoulis,et al.  DEA and its use in the regulation of water companies , 2000, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[22]  Abraham Charnes,et al.  Using data envelopment analysis to evaluate efficiency in the economic performance of Chinese cities , 1989 .

[23]  L. Seiford,et al.  Computational Accuracy and Infinitesimals In Data Envelopment Analysis , 1993 .

[24]  A. Charnes,et al.  SENSITIVITY OF EFFICIENCY CLASSIFICATIONS IN THE ADDITIVE MODEL OF DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS , 1992 .

[25]  William W. Cooper,et al.  Sensitivity and Stability Analysis in DEA: Some Recent Developments , 2001 .

[26]  Stephen Haag,et al.  An Income Efficiency Model Approach to the Economic Consequences of Osha Cotton Dust Regulation , 2001 .

[27]  W. Bowlin,et al.  Measuring Performance: An Introduction to Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) , 1998 .

[28]  A. Charnes,et al.  Sensitivity and stability of efficiency classifications in Data Envelopment Analysis , 1996 .

[29]  William W. Cooper,et al.  Evaluating Program and Managerial Efficiency: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis to Program Follow Through , 1981 .