Drinking water treatment plant assessment through performance indicators

Performance assessment (PA) of urban infrastructure services, mainly in the case of water systems, is becoming a major issue worldwide. Therefore, in the last decade, the need for a clear definition of management objectives of water services and the subsequent need to monitor goals achievement have led to the development of some initiatives to tackle the evaluation of the efficiency of those services, their main aim being the definition of systems of performance indicators. However, these PA systems are strongly oriented by a management/economic perspective and technical aspects have often been ignored. In addition, none of them has specifically addressed the drinking water treatment.

This paper presents a proposal for a PI system that applies to drinking water treatment facilities as a part of a standardised methodology for performance assessment. In total, ca. 80 PI have been defined and classified according to seven evaluation domains, namely: treated water quality; plant reliability; use of natural resources and raw materials; by-products management; safety; human resources; and, economical and financial resources.