The Development and Application of the Performance Indicator for Sewage System Service in Korea

하수도서비스 평가지표 개발 및 적용에 관한 연구

With rapid expansion of the water market and growth of water companies, the recent trends in international water industry show that standardization of service activities concerning management of water and wastewater system (ISO/TC 224, to be issued in the second half year of 2007) is expected to have a large influence on the global water market including liberalization of water service market. In the Draft International Standard(DIS) of ISO/TC224, Performance Indicators(PIs) are suggested to estimate the service activities relating to water and wastewater treatment facilities. PIs have been developed in many countries including some international organization(World Bank, IWA and etc.) for service benchmarking. To evaluate public service level and establish plans to improve service level of wastewater utilities, we developed PIs for 120 items and applied them to 10 sewage utilities in the consideration of their scales, circumstances and conditions. In this study, we verified the applicability of the developed performance indicators(PIs). So, we concluded that PIs developed for the purpose of this study can be a useful tool applicable to objective evaluation of the service level of sewage utilities. Using the evaluation tool of PIs developed, it can also be used as a benchmarking tool in this industry as well as for enhancing the efficiency of operation and management of the sewage system. It will also contribute to the water resource management through determination of investment priorities based on the evaluation results and to raising international competitiveness of the domestic sewage utilities to meet the future opening of the water market.