Seminar Title: Sustainability of Urban Water Services: Scorecards and Roadmaps

Wednesday 8th April in Lecture Theatre 5, W39 in EBL Building at 13:00PM.

Professor Rui Marques

University of Lisbon

Abstract

This presentation discusses the concept of ‘sustainable water services’ and suggests a multicriteria method to assess it. Although conceptual discussions around this notion are often confined to the triple bottom line (TBL) classification, it seems that the TBL approach does not provide the suitable framework to measure water services sustainability. It is argued that assets (or technical) and governance aspects are also key dimensions. After revisiting the concept in broader terms, several criteria and metrics are suggested to operationalize and quantify the sustainability level of urban water services. To aggregate the numerous aspects that are relevant in this scope a multicriteria decision analysis approach is proposed. With the suggested framework it is possible to assess the global sustainability level of the water services (e.g. of each utility) and also the performance in each particular dimension (‘social’, ‘environmental’, ‘economic’, ‘governance’ and ‘assets’).

Rui Marques is Professor in Systems and Management of Infrastructure, University of Lisbon. Rui Cunha Marques (www.ruicunhamarques.com), graduated, post-graduated, M.Sc. Ph.D., Postdoc/habilitation is a Full Professor and Chair of the Scientific Area of Systems and Management of Infrastructure at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon (IST), Portugal. He is a researcher at the Center of Urban and Regional Systems of IST (CESUR), at the Public Utility Research Center (PURC) at the University of Florida and at the Center of Local Government (CLG) at the University of Armidale in Australia, where he is a Visiting Professor at the Business School. His areas of expertise include regulation of public services, performance assessment, governance, project management and procurement, mainly public-private partnerships and infrastructure services, particularly water, wastewater and urban waste. He is the author of over 400 scientific publications in several countries, including 11 books (five in English) and two theses. He has more than 100 refereed journal articles. He has supervised several post-graduation students (more than 50 between Ph.D. and M.Sc.). He also produced more than 300 technical reports. In the past years he has been a consultant of the World Bank and he has collaborated with other international organizations, such as the European Investment Bank, Transparency International, the European Union, the United Nations and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, as well as with other government entities and public and private companies from several countries. Rui Marques has developed work in more than 20 countries in the five continents. In the areas of his leadership, which are regulation, PPP and complex project management in the water and waste sectors, he is invited several times per year to give talks and to provide technical assistance. He was the mentor of the so-called sunshine regulatory method which is being applied in the water sector regulation around the world and he is acknowledged as a world expert in water and waste PPP arrangements.