Improved method to calculate a Water Poverty Index at local scale

Author (s): Giné, R. and Pérez-Foguet, A.
Journal: ASCE Journal of Environmental Engineering

Volume: 136, Issue 11
Pages: 1287 – 1298
Date: 2010

Abstract:
The Water Poverty Index (WPI) was created as an interdisciplinary indicator to assess water stress and scarcity, linking physical estimates of water availability with the socio-economic drivers of poverty. This index has found great relevance in policy-making as an effective water management tool, particularly in resources allocation and prioritization processes. Two conceptual weaknesses exist in the current index: (i) inadequate technique to combine available data, and (ii) poor statistical properties of the resulting composite.
The purpose of this paper is to propose a suitable methodology to assess water poverty that overcomes these weaknesses. To this end, a number of combinations to create the WPI has been considered, based on indicators selection criteria, simple aggregation functions and multivariate analysis. Each alternative method has been applied at local scale to the Turkana District, Kenya as a case study.
The paper concludes that the weighted multiplicative function is the most appropriate aggregation method for estimation of water poverty. It is least eclipsing and ambiguous free function, and it does not allow compensability among different variables of the index.

  
  

Bibtex:

@article{ RGG-APF:2010,
author = {Giné, R. and Foguet, A.},
title = {Improved Method to Calculate a Water Poverty Index at Local Scale},
journal = {Journal of Environmental Engineering},
volume = {136},
number = {11},
pages = {1287-1298},
year = {2010},
doi = {10.1061/(ASCE)EE.1943-7870.0000255},
URL = {http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/%28ASCE%29EE.1943-7870.0000255}
}