Water Index parameters

Sulochana,

Quality is certainly an essential class of parameters. BIS 105001 outlines water quality standards, we do plan to track these parameters as well.

Sanjay,

I'm thinking one for each locality we are tracking, as well as a composite city index.

I think it makes sense to track some parameters locality wise for two reasons:

(i) Every locality's water experience is different. For example, many apartment complexes along Sarjapur Road depend primarily on privately supplied tanker water. These localities may have a significantly lower BWSSB pipeline connection coverage than do other parts of the city. Similarly, I remember reading that residents of villages surrounding Bellandur lake report a significantly higher propensity towards respiratory/skin diseases than those living in other areas. Highlighting these differences is important because,

(ii) Most of us don't push our local govts for better water/services because we simply don't know any better. 'Bhala uski kameez meri kameez se safed kaise' ('how come his shirt is whiter than mine') is actually a pretty effective call to action. :)

Other parameters (like water unaccounted for) can be tracked at a city level.

An index can be constructed for each locality from both sets of parameters. So, if the water unnacounted for in the city decreases one month, every locality's index will look a bit better. On the other hand, Koramangala's changing coverage would affect its index alone.

Finally, a City index could be constructed on the basis of these parameters as well.

What do you think makes sense?

Some additional important parameters:

- Infiltration vs. runoff: i.e., how much water is received by precipitation vs. how is available as ground water vs. how much runs off w/o being utilized. Extent of infiltration that is enabled than being allowed to runoff (probably just from the less implemented and much-hyped RWH). RWH is one component - see SuDS and LID. 

- Sources for water: there is talk about pumping from Mangalore! Or, dam"ming" the SW runoff valleys in B'luru. Cheaper to infiltrate than above two. Source / supply will affect cost and the index. Higher distance / cost or dams = lower sustainability = lower no. on index

- Water recycling: Quantity (in percentage), re-supply, cost, etc.

Best to separate out sewage and sewerage from water index except for recycled good or grey water.

- Cost / subsidy: If people are paying or willing to pay high cost for tanker water, why will they not pay un-subsidized cost for supplied water?

- Per capita std. requirement / demand vs. availability (some people dont like "per capita" as a measure ;-) but standards are based on lpcd)

- On lakes: no. of treatment plants, recovery of cost from surrounding establishments / apartments / homes / industries. again, recycling data. No point clearing pollution - just medicine and not preventive.

OK - dont want to inundate (:-)). If it takes off, may add more in future. Most of the data should be available w/ BWSSB (esp. reqd. when applying for loans) - so no point spending extra time. ISEC is also a good source. A base or standard is needed otherwise an index number of 77 means what?? Is 100 perfect?

Great start - however, I'm also not clear as to how an index can be developed - it has to be comparative, & if this is the case, compare it with what ?

The best way is to link the index to an ideal. To arrive at an ideal, there are some references....

1) S Vishwanath (Founder, Rainwater Club) quotes a per-capital per-day consumption of 135 litres in urban India in this Citizen matters article.

2) Daily indoor per capita water use in the typical single family home is 69.3 gallons or about 262 litres, as per this webpage. This figure has also been quoted on wikipedia here.

Thus, the 135 litres consumption for urban India is about half that of US standards, & probably well below many other countries too. The US reference also quotes a lower achievable figure of 45.2 gallons or about 171 litres per-capital per-day - this too is much higher than urban India's consumption levels.

BWSSB is all set to hike water rates steeply (33-200%) from May-2010, as per this TOI report.

The next question would of course be water quality - some references have already been cited above. Then, there is the question of availability in each locality (or ward) - quantum /percentage of each category per ward: piped water (Bwssb), common /public taps in low income areas & tanker supply from borewells.

Promise to spend some thinking time on reviewing the components (referred to as parameters) for index (and sub-indices). And also promise to attend one of these project meetings.

From process perspective, if you see comments above, the list of components (parameters) could keep expanding. I suggest this:

• List all that we can think of by a date, say April 15th. Assume that we get 30 concrete data items.
• Then, put them to vote in this and other forums and pick top 10 "popular" data items.
• Get to the experts (as accepted by most members of the project team), as in the likes of Zenrainman sir, past or current BWSSB chairpersons, and not arm chair experts like myself. Keep 5 data items picked by experts
• Publish first index based on these 10+5 items.
• Collect data from as many of the data items as possible outside of this top 10+5. This is so that we are somewhat ready for future changes to the 10+5. I bet we will juggle the index components after seeing first few month's numbers.

After we publish numbers for first 3-4 months, we will get a better idea of what the components need to be. Let us just start publishing something ASAP, say by end of May

This is almost like the way most indices are calculated - can't include everything, so pick the most valuable components (Sensex - 30 large cap stocks, not all stocks, Wholesale price index - price of select commodities in select categories, not everything).

However, we will need some maths/stats experts to normalize the data points because if one data point goes out and a new one comes in (from the top 10+5 components), the absolute numerical value shouldn't change the index number in significant way.

I would say make the 10+5 list first. If some technical data point is too critical for the index, and hard to get or even approximate, then let us look for institutes (IISc, etc) or sponsors to start some work to get those data points.

If we indeed hit such hard to get data points, I would term that to be the first successful milestone for this project. that would prove to all water lovers in the city that we don't even know fully well how good or bad a state we are in.

Can someone start maintaining an excel sheet with index components? Neha - if you can mail me all your notes, and a list in an email, I volunteer to prepare the first excel sheet.

You got me there IDS. Keep preaching to all to use the website more than emails, and I chose not to practice that myself here.

Shekhar - time to try the project wiki feature?

ssheragu

I have a suggestion

why does not laying of water pipelines be a part of the wter index; in this way, we can ensure that no pipelines wil run in the middle of the road

many thanks

Srinath Heragu