Input data report for economic assessments of water supply interventions in the Göteborg region

Report, 2018

This report is part of a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas with
support from RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, The Göteborg Region Association of
Local Authorities (GR) and the City of Göteborg. The study was performed at the centre for
drinking water research (DRICKS). The research project aims to develop a decision support
model for sustainability assessments of regional water supply interventions and cooperations
based on a combination of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and cost-benefit
analysis (CBA). This report focuses on the CBA part of the model.
In the process of developing the model, five alternative water supply interventions for the
Göteborg region were evaluated. By applying the decision model to alternatives focusing on
establishing inter-municipal organizations, (de)centralization of water production, as well as
source water quality and redundancy aspects, the model was tested for some common
decision situations in the water supply sector. The application in the Göteborg region was a
way to develop the model, and at the same time demonstrate and evaluate its feasibility.
This report presents input parameters of the CBA for the alternative interventions.
For the Göteborg region, it was found that the alternative which comprised a regionalized
governance and maintained semi-decentralized production had the highest probability of
being the most profitable solution, whereas the alternative which comprised maintained
governance with additional source waters and treatment plants had the second highest
probability of being the best solution.