A Methodological Approach for Quantitative Assessment of the Effective Wastewater Management: Lebanon as a Case Study

The sustainable access to basic sanitation services is one of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2000. A monitoring and reporting program on progress made on access to improved sanitation services has been pursued by the global community using the universal indicator 'proportion of population using an improved sanitation facility'. However, monitoring and reporting progress using this indicator does not reflect the effective wastewater management and pollution control. This paper presents a methodological approach for quantitative assessment of the effective wastewater management based on non-additive aggregation methodology which accounts for the interactions among indicators. Firstly, a set of indicators are identified and calculation methods are presented. Secondly, the use of 2-order Choquet integral to aggregate indicators into an Effective Wastewater Management index (EWM) is proposed. At the practical level, results of evaluation of the EWM of the Wastewater Collection Systems in Lebanon are then presented and discussed. Finally, the conclusions and further developments are presented. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.