Framework for Assessing Efficient Water Consumption Attributes and Their Relative Importance in Office Complexes

Abstract

Globally, the water availability is getting difficult due to over extraction of ground water and rapid population growth. The Indian national water supply is expected to fall down by 50% below the demand by 2030. In the last decade, in spite of alluvial aquifers of the Indo-Gangetic plains, the over extraction of the ground water is making the scene catastrophic in the state of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), India. Therefore, to overcome this water stress condition in the urban areas of U.P., it is needed to achieve water sustainability in office complexes (major consumers of the drinking water supply of a city) based on the analysis of water resource management of the area. In this study, to develop water management attribute framework for office complexes, expert opinion based Delphi technique followed by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is adopted.

The determination and pairwise comparison of the components are computed using Delphi technique, while AHP is used to calculate the weights representing their relative importance. Finally, the water supply, consumption and financial aspects are found as crucial components with 0.378, 0.422 and 0.20 relative weights respectively. Thus, the developed framework rates the attributes (components, indicators and sub-indicators) with their relative importance (based on weights) which would intelligently assist decision makers to design priority issues and programmes for efficient water management system in the geographical area under consideration.