A Multicriteria Evaluation Based on the Grey-TOPSIS Method for Water Distribution Companies in Brazil

Abstract

The use of performance indicator systems is essential to evaluate the performance of water supply systems. They allow the quantification of the goals and objectives for service provision and are presented as the best alternative for monitoring the efficiency of these systems, with direct applications for managers, regulatory agencies, investors, users, society, and the providers themselves. Nevertheless, technicians and managers still have difficulty in interpreting the global performance of the systems because indicators present different characteristics and evaluations. The main limitation for global assessment is the lack of a broader view in the simultaneous analysis of a set of indicators. To overcome this challenge, aggregating individual indicators by a multicriteria analysis for decision support can be a solution for building synthetic global indices. The literature contains few works that focused on the performance of a global indicator that provides a holistic perspective. Thus, the aim of this study is to develop a multicriteria methodology based on the Grey Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (Grey-TOPSIS) method to evaluate the quality of operation of the services of water supply systems. TOPSIS was chosen to assist in solving decision-making problems and the grey technique was chosen to assist in imprecise data and make the model more concise and real. The proposal was applied to Brazilian companies, and the results were obtained by a performance ranking. The study also allowed a robustness analysis for two different stages, one analysis for changes in weight and the other for the exclusion of criteria, and thus the validation of the application was highlighted. Therefore, by the results and their validation, it was possible to identify the positive contribution this methodology can add to the operation and management of water supply systems worldwide.