Operational expenditure (OpEx)

This Capital Maintenance Expenditure (CapManEx) study of seven Small Towns’ Water Systems provides understanding of the recurrent cost elements needed for sustainable services delivery. Field visits were carried out to the water systems and copies of available records on O&M were obtained. A data classification guide was used to classify the data and adjusted to the year 2011 using Gross Domestic Product deflators. The classified data was annualised to find the average total cumulative cost.

This paper examines the performance of partnerships between local authorities (District Assemblies) and private operators (POs) in the community managed small towns' water service delivery in Ghana. Since 2002, partnerships in the form of management contracts are increasing especially for towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants but there has been no systematic analysis of the partnerships. Using a case study approach based on five selected community managed piped systems; three under private operator partnerships and two under direct Community Ownership and Management as study controls, the study focused on the partnership development, partnership relationship between stakeholders and the outcome of the service. The study revealed that the partnership emerged as a result of the relatively large communities and/or the complexity of the systems. Water and Sanitation Development Boards (WSDBs) are community representatives with the responsibility of overseeing the management contracts with private operators or directly managing the water systems through hired operating staff. With time the management contracts have improved as some earlier defects have been corrected in subsequent contracts. Yet some contracts suffered post-contract opportunism, weak monitoring and regulation by the District Assembly (DA), political interference in tariffs setting and removal of WSDBs members after change of government. Conflicts between the DAs and the Water and Sanitation Development Boards (WSDBs) were common resulting in direct management by the District Assembly. The success or failure of the partnership is linked to degree of conflict resolution amongst the stakeholders as well as external factors. The study also discusses the outcome of the partnerships in relation to the quality of water service delivered.

This paper examines the performance of partnerships between local authorities (District Assemblies) and private operators (POs) in the community managed small towns' water service delivery in Ghana. Since 2002, partnerships in the form of management contracts are increasing especially for towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants but there has been no systematic analysis of the partnerships. Using a case study approach based on five selected community managed piped systems; three under private operator partnerships and two under direct Community Ownership and Management as study controls, the study focused on the partnership development, partnership relationship between stakeholders and the outcome of the service. The study revealed that the partnership emerged as a result of the relatively large communities and/or the complexity of the systems. Water and Sanitation Development Boards (WSDBs) are community representatives with the responsibility of overseeing the management contracts with private operators or directly managing the water systems through hired operating staff. With time the management contracts have improved as some earlier defects have been corrected in subsequent contracts. Yet some contracts suffered post-contract opportunism, weak monitoring and regulation by the District Assembly (DA), political interference in tariffs setting and removal of WSDBs members after change of government. Conflicts between the DAs and the Water and Sanitation Development Boards (WSDBs) were common resulting in direct management by the District Assembly. The success or failure of the partnership is linked to degree of conflict resolution amongst the stakeholders as well as external factors. The study also discusses the outcome of the partnerships in relation to the quality of water service delivered.

This Capital Maintenance Expenditure (CapManEx) study of seven Small Towns’ Water Systems provides understanding of the recurrent cost elements needed for sustainable services delivery. Field visits were carried out to the water systems and copies of available records on O&M were obtained. A data classification guide was used to classify the data and adjusted to the year 2011 using Gross Domestic Product deflators. The classified data was annualised to find the average total cumulative cost.

Network utilities across the world are subject to regulation and political scrutiny. In developing countries, managing the trade-offs between socioeconomic and environmental objectives in public water and energy utilities is particularly challenging. These industries share important underlying technical and economic features. Therefore, many economic, governance, and policy lessons are transferable across these sectors. In India, the water sector suffers from mounting financial losses, lack of access, and poor quality of service. There is a dearth of literature on the multi-faceted nature of utility performance related to water utilities. We examine the socioeconomic and environmental aspects of urban water supply in India. We use a stochastic frontier analysis approach and distance functions to analyse the performance of 304 urban water supply utilities in three Indian states during the period 2010-2015. The results suggest that incentive-based economic reform and regulation would help the utilities improve their performance. More specifically measures to improve cost recovery, billing efficiency and reduce losses would help the utilities to enhance service delivery, expand coverage and induce efficiency in the sector. The results also show the dependence of water utilities on groundwater sources which is unsustainable in the long run. We highlight the need for designing economic incentives to improve the performance of utilities and enable them to achieve social and sustainability objectives.

Herein, a pilot study on the removal of ammonia from surface water using the integration of struvite precipitation and breakpoint chlorination is reported. A two staged pilot plant with a capacity of 1000 liters (1 m3) per run (LPR) was utilized, of which Stage 1 comprised struvite precipitation and Stage 2 comprised breakpoint chlorination. Optimum conditions (i.e., Stage 1) for struvite precipitation were 110 mg/L of Mg and P dosage (concentration), 150 rpm of mixing speed, 60 minutes of contact time, and lastly, 120 minutes of sedimentation, while optimum condition for the breakpoint chlorination (i.e., Stage 2) were 30 minutes of mixing and an 8:1 Cl2-NH4+ weight ratio. The synergistic effects of this hybrid system proved to be effective, with Stage 1 increasing the pH from 6.8 to 10.1, reducing Mn (≥97.0%) and Fe (≥99.6%) concentrations steeply, and concomitantly deactivated E coli and TPC to ≥ 99% and ≥91%, respectively, while ammonia was reduced from 5.4 mg/L to 2.7 mg/L-N (51.8 %). In Stage 2, i.e., breakpoint chlorination, ammonia was reduced from 2.7 mg/L to 0.02 mg/L-N whilst fully depleting residual microorganisms. Finally, the OPEX amounted to $ 0.31/m3; however, there is a potential for cost savings (≈53.2%) by replacing Kh2PO4 with waste phosphoric acid. Lastly, the results from this techno-economic evaluation study showed great potential compared to similar technologies, making this approach a game-changer towards the prudent management of elevated levels of ammonia amongst other problematic contaminants.

Owing to increasing consumption of video streams and demand for higher quality content and more advanced displays, future telecommunication networks are expected to outperform current networks in terms of key performance indicators (KPIs). Currently, content delivery networks (CDNs) are used to enhance media availability and delivery performance across the Internet in a cost-effective manner. The proliferation of CDN vendors and business models allows the content provider (CP) to use multiple CDN providers simultaneously. However, extreme concurrency dynamics can affect CDN capacity, causing performance degradation and outages, while overestimated demand affects costs. 5G standardization communities envision advanced network functions executing video analytics to enhance or boost media services. Network accelerators are required to enforce CDN resilience and efficient utilization of CDN assets. In this regard, this study investigates a cost-effective service to dynamically select the CDN for each session and video segment at the Media Server, without any modification to the video streaming pipeline being required. This service performs time series forecasts by employing a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network to process real time measurements coming from connected video players. This service also ensures reliable and cost-effective content delivery through proactive selection of the CDN that fits with performance and business constraints. To this end, the proposed service predicts the number of players that can be served by each CDN at each time; then, it switches the required players between CDNs to keep the (Quality of Service) QoS rates or to reduce the CP's operational expenditure (OPEX). The proposed solution is evaluated by a real server, CDNs, and players and delivering dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH), where clients are notified to switch to another CDN through a standard MPEG-DASH media presentation description (MPD) update mechanism.

This Capital Maintenance Expenditure (CapManEx) study of seven Small Towns’ Water Systems provides understanding of the recurrent cost elements needed for sustainable services delivery. Field visits were carried out to the water systems and copies of available records on O&M were obtained. A data classification guide was used to classify the data and adjusted to the year 2011 using Gross Domestic Product deflators. The classified data was annualised to find the average total cumulative cost.

The government of Ghana has since the late eighties pursued an ambitious decentralisation programme which seeks to devolve all responsibilities for planning and implementation of environmental sanitation schemes to the provincial local governments (District Assemblies). The decentralisation effort has been accompanied by a reform of the water and sanitation sector with emphasis on decentralised planning of water and sanitation projects, cost recovery, community ownership and management and increased private sector involvement in the delivery of services. However, the general perception is that efforts at improving sanitation have not been successful in ensuring a sustained development of the sub-sector. Current policies and strategies have failed to develop the required capacity and ensure the mobilisation of resources for addressing the enormous challenges within the sub-sector. Indeed the fast rate of urbanisation and population growth has worsened the situation over the years. Th...

Sustaining rural water services in Viet Nam requires an improved understanding of the costs and relative opportunities, especially given the government's support for private sector involvement in expanding water schemes. In particular, the life-cycle costs associated with the delivery of safe and sustainable water services in rural Viet Nam, as indeed elsewhere, are not well known, potentially compromising their long-term sustainability. To address this gap, this study assessed the cost structures of 14 water schemes in Viet Nam managed by private enterprises. Results showed that both capital and operational expenditures varied widely across the schemes assessed, reflective of the diversity of the age and characteristics of the schemes studied. Twelve of the 14 schemes generated a cash profit in the most recent calendar year; however, when taking into account depreciation, as well as historical subsidies and connection fee payments, only four of the schemes were profitable based...

Owing to increasing consumption of video streams and demand for higher quality content and more advanced displays, future telecommunication networks are expected to outperform current networks in terms of key performance indicators (KPIs). Currently, content delivery networks (CDNs) are used to enhance media availability and delivery performance across the Internet in a cost-effective manner. The proliferation of CDN vendors and business models allows the content provider (CP) to use multiple CDN providers simultaneously. However, extreme concurrency dynamics can affect CDN capacity, causing performance degradation and outages, while overestimated demand affects costs. 5G standardization communities envision advanced network functions executing video analytics to enhance or boost media services. Network accelerators are required to enforce CDN resilience and efficient utilization of CDN assets. In this regard, this study investigates a cost-effective service to dynamically select the CDN for each session and video segment at the Media Server, without any modification to the video streaming pipeline being required. This service performs time series forecasts by employing a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network to process real time measurements coming from connected video players. This service also ensures reliable and cost-effective content delivery through proactive selection of the CDN that fits with performance and business constraints. To this end, the proposed service predicts the number of players that can be served by each CDN at each time; then, it switches the required players between CDNs to keep the (Quality of Service) QoS rates or to reduce the CP's operational expenditure (OPEX). The proposed solution is evaluated by a real server, CDNs, and players and delivering dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH), where clients are notified to switch to another CDN through a standard MPEG-DASH media presentation description (MPD) update mechanism.

Sustaining rural water services in Viet Nam requires an improved understanding of the costs and relative opportunities, especially given the government's support for private sector involvement in expanding water schemes. In particular, the life-cycle costs associated with the delivery of safe and sustainable water services in rural Viet Nam, as indeed elsewhere, are not well known, potentially compromising their long-term sustainability. To address this gap, this study assessed the cost structures of 14 water schemes in Viet Nam managed by private enterprises. Results showed that both capital and operational expenditures varied widely across the schemes assessed, reflective of the diversity of the age and characteristics of the schemes studied. Twelve of the 14 schemes generated a cash profit in the most recent calendar year; however, when taking into account depreciation, as well as historical subsidies and connection fee payments, only four of the schemes were profitable based...

WASHCost is a five year action research project investigating the costs of providing water, sanitation and hygiene services to rural and peri-urban communities in Ghana, Burkina-Faso, Mozambique and India (Andhra Pradesh). The objectives of collecting and disaggregating cost data over the full life-cycle of WASH services are to be able to analyse costs per infrastructure and by service level, and to better understand the cost drivers and through this understanding to enable more cost effective and equitable service delivery. WASHCost is focused on exploring and sharing an understanding of the true costs of sustainable services (see www.washcost.info).

Financing of small towns piped water services is critical to ensure the long term sustainability of the services provided. Tariff determination details have been outlined in the national guidelines for small towns water delivery. However, a study on a number of the systems in Ghana indicates strong emphasis on funds generation mainly through the sale of water without corresponding attention to efficient and effective management of the funds for long-term sustainability. Some small towns piped water services barely break even and struggle to reach their design life. There is then a sharp decline in service level due to their inability to expand/upgrade their capacity to meet growing demand for from increasing populations. The authors have explored the evolution of post-project financing and have identified a serious gap in keeping a capital maintenance/replacement fund. Refocusing on efficient financial management and transparent governance systems for judicious utilisation of the fu...

The capital costs of water supply infrastructure vary widely both on a per-capita basis for water supply systems and on a per-unit basis for specific infrastructure items. Examples of capital expenditure per capita for some water supply systems were found to vary by as much as 19-fold within a single country (for mechanised boreholes in Ghana), and unit costs of water supply system components varied by more than 4-fold (for boreholes with hand pumps in Ghana). 4 3. Per capita costs Capex per capita values and details of water supply projects, including project start and finish dates, region, population, types of storage, water sources and energy are presented below, where available.

Network utilities across the world are subject to regulation and political scrutiny. In developing countries, managing the trade-offs between socioeconomic and environmental objectives in public water and energy utilities is particularly challenging. These industries share important underlying technical and economic features. Therefore, many economic, governance, and policy lessons are transferable across these sectors. In India, the water sector suffers from mounting financial losses, lack of access, and poor quality of service. There is a dearth of literature on the multi-faceted nature of utility performance related to water utilities. We examine the socioeconomic and environmental aspects of urban water supply in India. We use a stochastic frontier analysis approach and distance functions to analyse the performance of 304 urban water supply utilities in three Indian states during the period 2010-2015. The results suggest that incentive-based economic reform and regulation would ...

This paper describes the economic and environmental comparative analysis performed on macro and femtocell deployments and most prevalent results obtained. Four specific scenarios are studied and, for eaeh one, an evaluation is made in terms of network capacity, cost effeetiveness and expeeted carbon emissions on the environmental side. It provides mobile networks operators (MNO) with novel relevant information, enabling them to adapt business models and deployment approaches to eurrent and future trends in a sustainable way, while minimizing capital (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX). It is verified that the scenario is mandatory to the best option macro-femtocell.

The sustainable delivery of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services in rural and small towns in Ghana is threatened by high levels of system malfunction and breakdown. To contribute to the understanding of factors affecting long term sustainable service delivery, this study examined the planning process for delivering sustainable WASH services particularly with respect to the existing and potential uses of cost information in WASH decision making. The study reveals that the use of cost information in district water and sanitation planning is limited to the cost of providing and operating new facilities together with some limited cost information on replacement and capital maintenance. The planning process does not systematically address the full range of costs required once construction has taken place to ensure the smooth and indefinite provision of services. Even though some plans may give an indication of the likely cost of operating the WASH facilities, this is not often translated into the allocation of adequate financial resources to take care of all operational costs. Planning and budgeting for capital maintenance is often on an ad hoc basis. This results in significant proportions of non-functional WASH facilities. This paper discusses possible use of cost information to strengthen and improve the planning process and hence service delivery.

Sustaining rural water services in Viet Nam requires an improved understanding of the costs and relative opportunities, especially given the government's support for private sector involvement in expanding water schemes. In particular, the life-cycle costs associated with the delivery of safe and sustainable water services in rural Viet Nam, as indeed elsewhere, are not well known, potentially compromising their long-term sustainability. To address this gap, this study assessed the cost structures of 14 water schemes in Viet Nam managed by private enterprises. Results showed that both capital and operational expenditures varied widely across the schemes assessed, reflective of the diversity of the age and characteristics of the schemes studied. Twelve of the 14 schemes generated a cash profit in the most recent calendar year; however, when taking into account depreciation, as well as historical subsidies and connection fee payments, only four of the schemes were profitable based on a 20-year design life assumption. The study complements previous research demonstrating barriers to achieving universal access when relying on user-pays systems. The results provide a useful reference point to inform business planning for enterprises, as well as policy and support mechanisms important for securing sustainable rural water supply services.

This book describes how IRC, with a wide range of partners, worked in four countries... to uncover the real costs of sustainable and acceptable services, and how [together], they attempted to ensure that countries would never again have to work in ignorance of some of the basic facts of economic life. ... [It] presents the management and practical challenges of working in a sector that had a collective loss of memory about what had been spent and what had been missed. It shows how finance and economics are intimately connected with issues of quality and service. ... It is an essential reading for those who want to know how action research works, how it often turns out to be more complicated than expected, and why change does not happen more quickly and according to external expectations [authors' abstract].'

rapid increase in water demand has necessitated water utilities in developing countries to maintain existing infrastructure to deliver services while extending services to the unserved population. close attention to the two needs -keeping assets and cost of urban water supply of two biggest urban water systems in Ghana by examining the magnitude and relative magnitude of recurrent expenditure and the cost of water systems, accra-Tema (aWss) and Kumasi (KWss). all costs were adjusted in terms of cost per connection, cost per person served, and cost per cubic meter of water supplied. The dominant recurrent cost component is the operational expenditure (opEx). capital maintenance expenditure (capmanEx) levels represent 8% of tenance, which was supported by relatively high levels of non-revenue water. The actual annual capital investments (capEx-enh) are inadequate compared to expenditure levels required to achieve universal service coverage. The implication for the low current capEx-enh levels is higher future capital investments to increase coverage especially to the unserved population. unit cost in aTWss was slightly lower than KWss due to economy of scale. The costs details are discussed in relation to meeting universal coverage and maintaining assets for reliable service.

Sustaining rural water service levels requires institutionalised efforts to support local level service providers, users or user groups (direct support) and recurrent expenditure on operational and capital maintenance expenditure on water systems when needed. The rural water sector in Ghana is challenged with inadequate expenditure on direct support (ExpDS) and capital maintenance (CapManEx) with resultant high rates of nonfunctional and non-reliable water facilities resulting in low water services received by users. This paper tracks the direct support and capital maintenance cost of rural water services and compares the levels of the actual with the realistic or ideal cost for sustainable service delivery. The study is based on analysis of data on actual expenditure of water systems generated by the WASHCost study in Ghana and the use of planning and budgeting exercises to generate the realistic ExpDS conducted as part of decentralised level life-cycle cost approach (LCCA) training. The study shows that both the direct support cost and capital maintenance expenditure in Ghana are far lower than the international benchmarks for sustainable water service delivery. The actual direct support cost measured and ideal direct support cost obtained from the WASHCost study are less than international benchmarks, about 20% -40% of international WASHCost benchmarks. The CapManEx for water point systems are also less than the benchmarks by 13% -33%. Monitoring rural WASH service delivery in the areas of the life-cycle costs and service levels are important for strengthening planning, budgeting, and delivery of sustainable services for all. The study argues for the inclusion of life-cycle costs and service levels in WASH sector monitoring framework.

This Capital Maintenance Expenditure (CapManEx) study of seven Small Towns' Water Systems provides understanding of the recurrent cost elements needed for sustainable services delivery. Field visits were carried out to the water systems and copies of available records on O&M were obtained. A data classification guide was used to classify the data and adjusted to the year 2011 using Gross Domestic Product deflators. The classified data was annualised to find the average total cumulative cost. The results showed average recurrent cost of the water systems for period of five years to be around USD 5 per capita/yr corresponding to less than USD 0.7 per m 3 of water production/yr. The major component of the total recurrent cost is the Operational and Minor maintenance Expenditure (OpEx) with the CapManEx representing less than 25%. The water systems finance CapManEx from water tariffs, but savings towards CapManEx are not based on the policy guidelines.