An Integrated Approach to Water Supply Planning: Case of Addis Ababa (Nifas Silk Lafto sub city)
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2016-10
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In planning and designing a water supply planning system, the key emphasis for meeting the growing water demand in Addis Ababa and elsewhere in the world is often focused on the endless desire to search for new resources and development of them. Limited effort is devoted to addressing in the issue in an integrated approach which combines the supply and demand side in a sustainable approach. Integrated water supply planning is a significant issue for sustainable development to maximize economy, secure production and minimize environmental impacts. The identification of sustainable water demand management practices is technically challenging because of lack of educated staff and attitude.
Over the past few years, however, some efforts were seen in the developed countries to frame the water supply planning issue in an integrated fashion. However, this approach is not being practiced in developing countries, like Ethiopia, where the water supply problem is critical and the effort seems to repeat the track developed countries have taken without making the most out of the late comer position they maintain. With limited availability of water as a resource, the population pressure, the limited financial resource and other socio economic factors the traditional approach of endless investment is limited in its make to be a sustainable solution to water supply problems.
The analytical hierarchy process AHP, which is able to provide solutions for problems involved in determining the priorities of various policies, can also be successfully used to approach water policy and management. With regard to water shortage problem in the sub city of Nifas silk lafto, an AHP structure is constructed for helping decision making with a main objective and sub objectives. Among the various water policies, 22 policies are examined, and a set of six constraints is considered as criteria. A system is formed to support the judgments through a 3 round questionnaire for hierarchy in order to diminish the effect of subjective bias and interview with the manager of the sub city branch office of AAWSA. Computations are processed through AHP using excel. The results provide both qualitative and quantitative information on the policies as well as the priorities from the point of view of water supply planning and development. The AHP model gives not only the relative importance of each factor for each level but also the composite weights in relation to the main objective.
Key words: Water demand, Demand management, Analytic hierarchy process, Addis Ababa
Description
Keywords
Water demand; Demand management; Analytic hierarchy process; Addis Ababa