Efficiency, Conflicting Goals and Trade-Offs: A Nonparametric Analysis of the Water and Wastewater Service Industry in Italy

This paper presents a benchmarking study of the water and wastewater industry in Italy. A three-stage modeling approach was implemented to measure the efficiency of 53 utility operators. This approach is based on the implementation of network and conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) to model the production process of the water service utility operators. In comparison to the conventional black-box or one-stage production model generally adopted in previous studies, the proposed approach provides information relative to the different efficiency components of the stages and blocks of the water service production process and its overall efficiency. Further, by shifting the efficiency analysis to a two-dimensional performance space, i.e., resource and market-efficiency, it offers a more comprehensive view of the water service industry and allows accounting for different business goals at the same time and for an investigation of industry trade-offs. Results show that the operators’ efficiencies in the Italian water service industry are generally variable and low. There are no water service utilities which are 100% efficient from the resource-efficiency perspective, and the maximum efficiency score is 0.545. Efficiency measurements suggest that there is a general orientation of the Italian water industry to not invest in upgrading and improving the infrastructure assets, and achieving an acceptable efficiency in the operations is critical to delivering water services to market in an efficient way. Only one utility operator is 100% efficient from the market-efficiency perspective. The low tariffs adopted by the water service operators do not allow the gaining of satisfactory service remuneration and the achievement of long-term business sustainability. The joint analysis of the resource and market efficiency scores indicates that there is a trade-off between the corresponding business goals

‘To be multilingual means … ’: exploring a participatory approach to multilingual identity with schoolchildren †

This article presents an innovative way to engage schoolchildren in discussions on multilingualism and multilingual identity using research data they helped generate. Adopting an exploratory, participatory approach to research, our study uses digital data visualisations in interactive sessions aimed at engaging lower secondary students in identity formation and negotiation. The paper starts with a contextualisation of multilingualism and language learning in Norwegian education and the contributions of our study to relevant research in the field. Next, we discuss the epistemological and pedagogical implications of our participatory approach and its integration within the general mixed methods framework of the Ungspråk project, a three-year study that investigates different aspects of multilingualism in Norwegian lower secondary schools. The paper then focuses on the development of the main pedagogical tools used in the interactive sessions: digital visualisations based on data from an online questionnaire previously answered by participants. Particular attention is paid to the design of the visuals in promoting students’ engagement with the data and autonomy in interpreting research findings. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main findings from interactive sessions in which participants engaged in reflections on multilingualism and multilingual identity via interaction with the visuals, researchers and their peers.publishedVersio

Performance Evaluation of Water Services in Italy: A Meta-Frontier Approach Accounting for Regional Heterogeneities

first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints Open AccessArticle Performance Evaluation of Water Services in Italy: A Meta-Frontier Approach Accounting for Regional Heterogeneities by Corrado lo StortoORCID Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, 80125 Naples, Italy Water 2022, 14(18), 2882; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14182882 Received: 22 August 2022 / Revised: 11 September 2022 / Accepted: 13 September 2022 / Published: 15 September 2022 (This article belongs to the Section Water Resources Management, Policy and Governance) Download Browse Figures Versions Notes Abstract Data relative to the water services industry in Italy indicate that there is a serious infrastructure gap between the southern regions and isles and the rest of the country. In these geographical areas, water utilities are provided with substantial public grants from the central and local governments to support investments necessary to mitigate the infrastructure divide by increasing capacity and improve service quality. This paper implements a meta-frontier non-parametric approach based on a data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the efficiencies of 71 Italian water utilities, accounting for the differentiated contexts in which they operate. A short-term perspective was assumed to estimate efficiency, considering the production factors associated with the infrastructure assets as non-discretionary inputs in the specification of the meta-frontier model. The results showed that water utilities operating in the southern regions and isles suffer from an efficiency gap in comparison to those in the northern and central regions. The average efficiency gap was 9.7%, achieving 24.9% in the worst case. Moreover, a more in-depth analysis focusing on the water utilities in the southern regions and isles indicated that scale inefficiencies might be an important determinant of such an efficiency gap. Indeed, slightly more than 69% of the water utilities operated at increasing returns to scale. Evidence from this study raises concern about the appropriate structure of the Italian water service industry and, particularly, the optimal size of the utilities and the financial sustainability of water services in the southern regions and isles

Fingerprints: towards a multisensory approach to meaning in digital media

This paper argues for a multisensory approach to meaning-making in digital environments guided primarily by the sense of touch. Drawing on insights from multimodality, anthropology of the senses, cognitive science and media studies, among other disciplines, the text explores how such an approach can contribute to a more refined understanding of literacy and meaning-making practices in digital media. The paper starts by examining the relationship between meaning, embodiment and the senses, paying particular attention to the sense of touch. The discussion then focuses on the fundamentally tactile properties of digital media and explore their material, sensory and semiotic dimensions. The discussions are supported and complemented by the analysis of two empirical, illustrative examples of how a multisensory approach to meaning can help shed light on literacy practices in the digital age: the reading and interpretation of digital data visualizations and the production of videos using the TikTok app.publishedVersio

A nonparametric economic analysis of the US natural gas transmission infrastructure: efficiency, trade-offs and emerging industry configurations

This paper presents a study aimed at measuring the efficiency of the transmission segment of the US natural gas industry from an economic perspective. The gas transmission infrastructure is modeled as an economic production function and a multi-stage modeling approach based on the implementation of Data Envelopment Analysis is employed to obtain an efficiency measure in a two-dimension performance space, i.e., cost and revenue-efficiency. This approach allows taking into account conflicting business goals. The study also performs cluster analysis to uncover homogeneous efficiency profiles relative to the gas transmission systems to explore determinants of efficiency rates, and trade-off situations. A sample containing 80 US gas transmission systems is used in the analysis. Results indicate that the transmission segment of the US gas industry has considerable inefficiencies, while average cost and revenue-efficiency scores are 0.324 and 0.301, and only three transmission systems achieve high scores on both efficiency dimensions. Cluster analysis identified seven configurations. In three of them there are no trade-off situations between cost and revenue efficiencies. However, only in one of them gas transmission systems have high efficiencies. The remaining four configurations exhibit trade-off situations having different intensity. Such trade-offs can be determined by the gas transmission infrastructure size

Congestion effect on renewable energy production efficiency in Europe

In the last decade the renewable energy facilities have become very important for generating electricity in Europe. Estimating the production efficiency of renewable energy industry is thus a major concern of governments. This paper implements Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure efficiency in the generation of electricity from renewable sources during 2002-2011 in 31 European countries. As input congestion may introduce bias in the efficiency analysis, an improved DEA model is used to correct and avoid efficiency underestimation