Dear Sofian Boukhari

Thank you for your request to review your article

Utilizing a combined Delphi-FAHP-TOPSIS technique to assess the effectiveness of the water supply service in Algeria

These are my comments to your paper

As I comprehend it, your objective is to assess the performance of the WSS (Water Supply Service), that is the whole system, but there are two aspects missing:

a) You don’t define what is performance in this context.

b) You don’t demonstrate how your alternatives will determine the goodness of WSS, that is, you will get a ranking of alternatives, but that it is not enough to define the performance of the system. It will only determine which alternative is more important than another.

To clarify this concept, the fact that reducing water loss (Alt 5) is the most important action and alternative, does not necessarily mean that the whole service is good, if for instance, the quantity of water in each household is not enough to satisfy its daily needs. Same applies for water price reform (Alt. 4) and water quality (Alt. 6).

People can get better prices for the water they consume, but it may be slightly contaminated with salt, or finally, people receive very good water quality, but interruption of service is normal. That is, none of these alternatives may be considered on their own, but associated to others.

Regarding criteria, I don’t see in your study, that water much reach each household at least in a minimum quantity. You implicitly say that the most important indicator is water losses, and most probably it is, but the study does not consider how these losses damage the system when people is not receiving the minimum needed. Therefore, you now know which is the most important alternative, but does not know its effects on people.

Same with the others alternatives, consequently, you are in no condition to evaluate the performance of the system, but only find the importance of potential alternatives to improve it.

If I were doing this very interesting study, I would first conform a team of experts, who can define criteria to evaluate what a WSS performance should be, based in knowledge, experience, on WHO (World Health Organization) minimum limits of water per person/day, and technical values for the maximum quantiry of water that the system can support due to losses, water pressure, water quality, reliable supply, etc.

That is, criteria, only as a limited example, should refer to:

Quantity: Minimum of 150 litres per person/day and a maximum of 180 litres per person and per day,

Quality: PH no more than 7.5 and no less than 6.8

Turbidity: no more than……in solids suspension

Safety: No more than …. in a bacteriological analysis

Pressure: No more that…..kg/cm2, and no less than….kg/cm2

Pressure on water trunks

Condition of water trunks (Age, corrosion, material, etc.)

Most of these low and high limits are international and are everywere in the Internet; therefore,there is nothing to guess.

What must be done then, is fill the decision matrix with real equivalent data for the system in operation, and run a MCDM method, like TOPSIS, using objective weights (Entropy, Standard Deviation, etc.)

The method will then select the best alternative to achieve the goals internationally established.

This is an engineering job, no something to solve with guessing or using intuition, consistencies and inconsistencies, and the experts don’t need, and there is no reason, to be transitive.

As you can see it is more complicated scenario than you present. You need many more criteria than you consider.

Your work does not comply with these basic requirements, only determines which are the most important alternatives. For what? What do you do with that information?

It certainly does not comply with the title that correctly aims at determining performance of a system.

By the way, you are not using AHP adequately, for many reasons, like:

1- There is a lot of dependent criteria, and AHP works only with independent criteria,

2- This is a system; you can’t partition it as AHP does,

3- This system is represented by a network, and AHP considers it as a lineal hierarchy to,

4- What is the sense in using fuzzy to improve invented weights from AHP?

5- FAHP is a fiction. The same Saaty said that fuzzy cannot be applied to AHP, because it is already fuzzy,

6 – Problems like this are real-life and consequently you have to address them with data, not with values from the mind of the DM.

Sofian, I realize that you will feel frustrated with my review, but you asked for my opinion, by which I am honored, and I give it trying to show you aspects that are not correct.

I sincerely wish my comments will help you

Nolberto Munier