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Measuring Urban Water Conservation Policies: Toward a Comprehensive Index
Author(s) -
Hess David J.,
Wold Christopher A.,
Worland Scott C.,
Hornberger George M.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
jawra journal of the american water resources association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.957
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1752-1688
pISSN - 1093-474X
DOI - 10.1111/1752-1688.12506
Subject(s) - index (typography) , plan (archaeology) , geography , environmental science , computer science , archaeology , world wide web
This article (1) discusses existing efforts to measure water conservation policies ( WCP s) in the United States ( U.S. ); (2) suggests general methodological guidelines for creating robust water conservation indices ( WCI s); (3) presents a comprehensive template for coding WCP s; (4) introduces a summary index, the Vanderbilt Water Conservation Index ( VWCI ), which is derived from 79 WCP observations for 197 cities for the year 2015; and (5) compares the VWCI to WCP data extracted from the 2010 American Water Works Association ( AWWA ) Water and Wastewater Rates survey. Existing approaches to measuring urban WCP s in U.S. cities are limited because they consider only a portion of WCP s or they are restricted geographically. The VWCI consists of a more comprehensive set of 79 observations classified as residential, commercial/industrial, billing structure, drought plan, or general. Our comparison of the VWCI and AWWA survey responses indicate reasonable agreement ( ρ = 0.76) between the two WCI s for 98 cities where the data overlap. The correlation suggests the AWWA survey responses can provide fairly robust longitudinal WCP information, but we argue the measurement of WCP s is still in its infancy, and our approach suggests strategies for improving existing methods.