Search results for "Data Envelopment Analysis"

Assessing changes in eco-productivity of wastewater treatment plants: The role of costs, pollutant removal efficiency, and greenhouse gas emissions

2018

Abstract Improving eco-efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) has been identified as being essential for achieving urban sustainability. Several previous papers have evaluated the eco-efficiency of WWTPs using data envelopment analysis (DEA) models. However, those models provided only a static assessment in that they ignored possible fluctuations over time within each plant. To overcome this temporal limitation, this paper evaluates dynamic eco-efficiency (changes in eco-productivity over time) of WWTPs using the dynamic weighted Russell directional distance model (WRDDM). This approach allows one to obtain an eco-productivity change index for each major component of the WRDDM mo…

Analysing the efficiency of wastewater treatment plants: The problem of the definition of desirable outputs and its solution

2020

Abstract Evaluating the efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is highly relevant to improve their performance from an economic and environmental perspective. The issue is even more critical in countries where WWTPs are benchmarked to regulate water companies and define WWTPs’ economic and environmental objectives. Despite the large number of previous studies on this topic, none has considered that the amount of outputs produced by the WWTPs is restricted by the concentration of pollutants in the effluent. To overcome this limitation, the study’s main objective was to propose a new variant of the Weighted Russell Directional Distance Model (WRDDM) that would solve problems regard…

Evaluation of energy performance of drinking water treatment plants: Use of energy intensity and energy efficiency metrics

2018

Abstract One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is to provide access to safe and clean drinking water. However, treating raw water in facilities currently involves using a non-negligible amount of energy, and the fossil fuels used are both expensive and emit greenhouse gases when combusted. Previous studies have evaluated the energy performance of drinking water treatment plants by estimating the amount of energy consumed per volume of water. However, such studies have not accounted for differences between treatment technologies and have assumed a common standard water treatment technology. To overcome these limitations, this study employed metafrontier data envelopment ana…

Energy efficiency in the European Union: What can be learned from the joint application of directional distance functions and slacks-based measures?

2014

Abstract Over the last few years concerns have increased about the energy mix in many countries. These concerns have been of greater magnitude for countries with a common energy regulation such as European Union (EU) member states. An important aspect to take into account when choosing a given energy mix is the efficiency involved in its generation. In this context, the present study analyzes the efficiency with which electricity and derived heat was produced in 25 EU member states over the last decade. This analysis considers not only the inputs and outputs involved but, more importantly, which undesirable by-products were generated during the production process, a relevant issue for EU cl…

Sensitivity analysis of efficiency and Malmquist productivity indices: An application to Spanish savings banks

2008

Hypothesis testing and statistical precision in the context of non-parametric efficiency and productivity measurement have been investigated since the early 1990s. Recent contributions focus on this matter through the use of resampling methods-i.e., bootstrapping techniques. However, empirical evidence is still practically non-existent. This gap is more noticeable in the case of banking efficiency studies, where the literature is immense. In this work, we explore productivity growth and productive efficiency for Spanish savings banks over the (initial) post-deregulation period 1992-1998 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and bootstrapping techniques. Results show that productivity growth…

Analysing farming systems with Data Envelopment Analysis: citrus farming in Spain

2004

Abstract Farming systems in the Mediterranean agricultural areas of Spain are frequently characterised by the small size of the production units and a widespread strategy of externalisation of many growing tasks which could be seen as a way of allowing farms to remain competitive. In this paper, we suggest Data Envelopment Analysis as an appropriate analytical tool to explore the possibilities of short-term viability of individual farms, after eliminating current inefficient practices. From a sample of Spanish citrus farms, we identify the efficient production units that determine the technological or best practice frontier, and we compare their characteristics with those of the average far…

On the dynamics of eco-efficiency performance in the European Union

2016

This paper evaluates the evolution of environmental performance in the context of the European Union (EU), over the period 1993–2010. The context is particularly relevant, due to the traditionally high concerns of the EU about these issues, which has triggered off several initiatives and regulations on environmental protection. In this setting, we conduct a two-stage analysis which develops environmental performance indicators in the first stage for each pair country-year, and evaluates its evolution in the second. More specifically, in the first stage we estimate specific efficiencies for three air-pollutants (CO2e, SO2, NOx), along with an eco-efficiency indicator, for which we use the sl…

Eficiencia en la educación superior. Estudio empírico en universidades públicas de Colombia y España

2020

Resumen En las últimas décadas, las universidades de Iberoamérica han introducido nuevos esquemas de evaluación de calidad y rendición de cuentas, inspirados en el modelo de la nueva gestión pública (NGP). En este contexto, la eficiencia en el reparto de los fondos públicos y la obtención del máximo rendimiento posible son una prioridad. Así, medir la eficiencia en el sector público, y específicamente en la educación superior, se ha convertido en un desafío para la ciencia contable. El objetivo de este trabajo es una propuesta para el cálculo de índices de eficiencia con modelos de análisis envolvente de datos (DEA), introduciendo un paso previo a través del análisis de correlación canónica…

ASSESSMENT OF FUNCTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS OF THE LONG-TERM SOCIAL CARE INSTITUTIONS IN LATVIA’S MUNICIPALITIES BY THE DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS METHOD

2019

Ranking World Tourism Competitiveness: A Comparison of Two Composite Indicators

2021

Assessing travel and tourism competitiveness (T&TC) is becoming an issue of paramount importance for stakeholders, mainly policymakers and practitioners. The availability of new databases such as the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) has boosted this interest. This chapter contributes to the current literature in this field with an assessment of the T&TC of 136 world tourist destinations. In doing so, two well-known approaches are employed: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with endogenous common weights, and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solutions (TOPSIS). World tourist destinations are ranked using these approaches,…