Composite Sustainable Management Index for Rural Water Supply Systems Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process

Some rural water supply (RWS) schemes were constructed in 2002 in the Dhule district of Maharashtra State in India as part of pilot projects launched in 68 districts throughout the country with financial assistance from the Government of India. The present research is derived from an investigation conducted on 11 such RWS schemes constructed during the period of 2002–2005 and aims to establish a composite sustainable management index for assessing long-term sustainability in the context of the level of service and evaluating the current performance level of piped-water supply schemes. The identification of factors influencing sustainable management is a prerequisite for developing a composite index. Various investigators have worked on the sustainability of RWS systems worldwide considering different sets of factors and subfactors. In this research, a set of five factors and 25 subfactors is considered. Two factors, though being a part of functional sustainability, are excluded in building the index; however, they are used to validate the results. The analytical hierarchy process is used for the development of metrics in decision making, i.e., for establishing the weight of factors and subfactors. The proposed model enables RWS utilities to identify the key sustainable management factors and provides a framework for aggregating various factors and subfactors into a composite sustainable management index. The outcome may also be used to identify the factors/subfactors that have potential for improvement and thus be helpful in finalizing the strategies for enhancing the functional sustainability of the system. The results demonstrate that nine subfactors out of the 25 dominate in all 11 RWS utilities studied. The RWS utilities are classified on the basis of their performance as high, moderate, or low in sustainability. The derived factors’ sustainability index may be useful for decision makers to discover the tradeoffs between them. The derived index may be a rational and transparent basis for recommending postconstruction support for a rural water utility. The limitations of the presented research are the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of the data considered, being slightly biased to the accessibility of information, in the absence of a more rational data-recording system.