A tool for evaluation of lifecycle cost of water production for small-scale community projects

The aim of this study is to develop an analytical tool to estimate lifecycle cost for water service provision for small-scale community water projects. The primary objective is to provide an analytical estimation tool to governments, funding agencies and communities to ensure sustainability of water projects. The secondary objective is to use the tool as an industry benchmarking aid to empower governments, funding agencies and technology developers to support technologies that would further lower the cost of water production. The tool firstly considers capital expenditure required for a given water service system, focusing on equipment manufacturing costs in detail. Thereafter, it considers the operational expenditure associated with ongoing functioning of the water treatment plant. The developed tool is validated using five simulation scenarios. Results shows that the tool can be used to evaluate the performance of a water service system even if the water services systems are operated using varying strategies. The developed tool also enables effective decision making by testing alternatives and addressing the water service system lifecycle aspects and, thus, making the cost of water production manageable. This paper also introduces the web version of the tool, which is available to communities, governments, technology developers and funding agencies to use.