Expert Opinion Valuation Method to Quantify Digital Water Metering Benefits

Abstract

Business cases promoting the introduction of digital water metering (DWM) have, to date, focused on a limited number of benefits, especially water savings, metering costs, occupational health and safety (OHS), and deferral of capital works. An earlier study by the authors catalogued 75 possible benefits and developed a taxonomy based on a literature review, interviews and water industry reports. The objective of the present study was to elicit the opinions of Australian water industry experts on the benefits, then use the opinions to form probability distributions which, in future work, could be used to model the value of DWM benefits. The study findings have implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to accurately and stochastically model the benefits of DWM transformation programmes. Thematic analyses on the open ended responses scaled likelihood and estimated value of benefits into comparable units. We found 82% support for the benefits of DWM with only 6% disagreement and 12% non-commital; the savings value of cost of water benefits were predominately expected to range between 5% and 10% and much higher in some individual situations, while charges/operational costs benefits were predominately expected to range between 45% and 100%; and, moreover, we indicated how a risk-based range of project benefit could potentially be calculated. Opportunities for further investigations were identified.