Potentials of Entrepreneurial Approaches in Addressing Global Societal Challenges: the Case of Fresh Water Supply

Submitted by: Alaleh Fallah Toussi (11735049)

Submitted at: Institute of Innovation Management Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Matthias Fink

December 2020

Potentials of Entrepreneurial Approaches in Addressing Global Societal Challenges: The Case of Fresh Water Supply

Master’s Thesis to confer the academic degree of Master of Science in the Master’s Program Management

JOHANNES KEPLER UNIVERSITY LINZ

Altenberger Str. 69

4040 Linz, Austria

www.jku.at

DVR 0093696

Statutory Declaration

I hereby declare that the thesis submitted is my own unaided work, that I have not used other than the sources indicated, and that all direct and indirect sources are acknowledged as references.

This printed thesis is identical with the electronic version submitted.

Linz, 20.12.2020

Abstract

This research “originally” aims to examine the general issues of water distribution to consumers in dispersed areas in Sweden and the question if a startup could be a solution to their current and future issues. My goal is to clarify how an entrepreneurial business model can look up for disperse areas in Sweden in order to distribute water and deliver energy supplies to inhabitants. In doing so, we have selected the municipality of Lilla Edet in Västra Götaland County of Sweden as an example. Although this research in particular focuses on scattered areas in Sweden, the insights and the conclusions could be possibly practical elsewhere in Europe, Africa or the Middle East.

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my patient University Professor and also

Supervisor, Professor Dr. Fink who has always supported me through the entire process of conducting my thesis from the beginning until the end. I am very thankful to his friendly support, sincere tips and advice which were all very heartwarming when facing the challenges of this research in the time of Covid-19.

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 7

2. BACKGROUND: OPERATIONS & INFRASTRUCTURES ...... 10

3. CASE STUDY ...... 14

3.1. GÖTA RIVER ...... 15

3.2. LULE RIVER ...... 19

4. EMPIRICAL RESEARCH: QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS ...... 21

4.1. LILLA EDET’S INTERVIEW OUTLINE ...... 21

4.2. TOPICS COVERED IN THE INTERVIEWS ...... 23

5. STARTUP AS A SOLUTION, DESIGNING A BUSINESS MODEL ...... 27

6. RUNNING INTO AN UNEXPECTED INSIGHT ...... 29

7. FURTHER DISCUSSIONS ...... 31

Table of Figures

Figure 1, Västra Götaland County ...... 14

Figure 2, Göta River ...... 18

Figure 3, Luleå Municipality...... 20

Figure 4, Lule River ...... 20

1. Introduction

Water is necessary to survive. Unlike some countries such as Israel where people are taught to appreciate water as it is scarce in this part of the world (Ofek and Preble, 2017), many European countries do not have water scarcity issues. However, many of their inhabitants particularly in dispersed areas face issues in regard to water accessibility. Regardless how wealthy that

European country is in terms of economics, this issue remains the same in all: how to distribute water in scattered regions within the country.

In most countries as in Sweden, drinking water supplies are provided and distributed locally. Thus, local governments are mainly in charge of supplying drinking water for their inhabitants. Important mentioning that regional and national levels additionally play key roles within this process. From planning to regulation and supervision as well as law enforcement, all levels are involved from the top to the bottom (Bendz & Boholm, 2019a). Therefore, drinking water management could be addressed as a political debate (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b) - if not in all countries - at least in most of the countries. Therefore, water management not only today but also in the future entails the attention of politicians at all levels. Finding an effective and efficient solution regarding water management issues is not easy, since the issues themselves are complex and challenging. There are often a number of obstacles such as “planning problems, with intertwined problem formulations and solutions, ridden with disagreement and uncertainty” (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b).

Although it is not a long time since drinking water supply has been regarded at the national-level policy criteria in Sweden, the lack of awareness and or (ignorance) of many local politicians and or people playing a key role in the local government – for example the role of people of technical background in water and sewer management section – is questioning (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b).

“The Drinking Water committee report that was submitted to the Swedish government in 2016 concludes that drinking water is by far the most critical support system in the country, a prerequisite for the functioning of the society, companies and all sorts of activities” (Bendz &

Boholm, 2019b, p. 2). A number of obstacles contribute to addressing water management issues in Sweden – but also globally. Senescent technical infrastructure, social changes as urbanization and finally climate impacts are these challenges. Thus, they require critical attention today so as to ensure that water will be available for the future generations (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b). Climate change results in increasing sea levels, heavy rains leading in floods and rising temperature. It is crucial to be prepared for the future as these problems are predicted to occur more often in the future. Hence, the most vital thing to survive, which will be threatened is the supply of safe and sound drinking water (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b; Wheeler and von Braun, 2013).

As already mentioned, in Sweden local municipalities play a key role in addressing the debates.

In this country local governments within municipalities possess an enormous amount of authority

(Wollmann, 2004). According to national rules and constitution, local governments in municipalities make decisions in regard to service supplies for inhabitants. Municipalities are in charge of provisioning drinking water and managing service production for example waterworks, pipelines and other facilities. They are further required to identify and manage risks. Thus, the interaction between public and political attention in communities could considerably impact on water resources management (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b).

Based on what we have explained so far, within this paper we address the challenges that the municipality of Lilla Edet is nowadays dealing with in respect to water provisioning to their citizens.

We tend to examine these challenges from close perspective and we aim to provide a plausible

solution to help out their burdens and facilitate their processes in this respect. For this reason, we have designed interviews to be conducted with the authorities who can influence relevant general agenda concerning own municipality and also day to day operations to deliver water to their citizens. Despite extensive efforts and enthusiasm to find out about their issues, we were very surprised by the ignorance of the authorities, which we later thoroughly would address within chapter 6 in this paper. This unexpected result made us examine the reasons why the authorities refused to get involved in spite of the fact that considerable attempts were performed to reach out to them and furthermore, the fact that this topic is of great importance. Thus, such questions arise:

- Why do local authorities lack interest for today’s water challenges they are facing?

- How can local authorities ignore their responsibility for ensuring water supply?

- Finally, why do local authorities lack interest for someone who extensively attempts to

reach out to them to offer help for free?

These are the issues we surprisingly encountered, in the phase of our interviews and thus, they pushed us into completely different perspective as “new challenge”. We, therefore, move forward into this direction and question this situation as the result of our interviews by examining from different perspectives driven from previous literature trying to understand what we encountered and why. This field additionally rises an interesting open question for the future research:

“How could you expect people to contribute in global societal challenges while politicians ignore the problems?” Especially when this is the case in “developed countries” where politicians are supposed to be aware and attentive to global societal challenges, how could you expect people of developing countries to care for global societal issues where politicians are actually uneducated and corrupted and people suffering from economic livelihood? Maybe the future research can respond to this question.

2. Background: Operations and Infrastructures

The focus of this research is on Sweden as it traditionally has had fairly strong governance at the local level in municipalities (Andersson, Petersson & Jarsjö, 2012).

In Sweden, the supply of water and duty of providing public services to citizens are split among three administrative levels:

1. The central level associated with the parliament

2. The regional level associated with County Administration

3. The local government level associated with the municipalities

At the zonal level there are 18 County Administrations as well as 2 Regional Administrations and further there are 290 municipalities at the local level in Sweden. The counties and municipalities are responsible for provisioning of the larger part of public services. The municipalities are also responsible for water provisioning and waste water. They are in charge of parts of the services.

For instance, “planning for and constructing water and sewage plants as well as the operation of the services” (Mattisson & Thomasson, 2010/12).

Generally speaking, there is an abundant amount of water resources in this country. The quality of drinking water is good and it is generated from surface water along with ground water.

Nonetheless, in Sweden conditions for water provisioning and sewage services vary among the municipalities concerning geographical and demographical variances. A greater part of Swedes reside in the south and more towards the south of the country – accordingly Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm, the three most populated cities of Sweden. The more we go towards the north of the country, the less population will appear and thus, the issue arises: the municipalities are in

charge of water supply and sewage services BUT merely for few citizens (Mattisson &

Thomasson, 2010/12).

The municipalities in Sweden have the duty of water provisioning along with waste water management as well as managing of storm water according to Water and Sewage Act, SFS

2006:412. These services are normally regulated by the same organizational entity. Based on the

Local Government Act (SFS 1991:900) the municipalities have almost full autonomy. In other words, they are mainly the primary and ultimate decision makers on how and in which way to select and organize public services provisioning to their inhabitants. Correspondingly, the municipalities differ in terms of water provisioning and public services to their citizens. Before, “in- house solutions” or “municipally owned corporations” were the most typical solution for arranging water and waste water services in the municipalities. Nevertheless, due to technological advancement and environmental enhancements as well as the increase of financial control, various types of “inter-municipal co-operations” became more typical (Mattisson, 2000; Mattisson

& Thomasson, 2010/12; Thomasson, 2004; Thomasson, 2006). In other words, municipalities became active in providing water and services for one another and thus, facilitating the process for one another.

According to the Municipal Act, municipalities are limited in operating and intervening within the geographical territory of other municipalities (Local Government Act, SFS 1991:900). Because of such a limitation, it has laid the municipalities in challenge to collaborate with one another unless they create “local government federations” or “jointly owned companies”. Yet, according to the new Water and Sewage Act which was approved in 2006 water and waste water services are not influenced by this rule and thus, they have become exception since 2006. Therefore, since then

until now a municipality or a municipally owned company is able to engage in any invitation regarding water provisioning and sewage services or activities in the rest of municipalities

(Mattisson & Thomasson, 2010/12; Water and Sewage Act, SFS 2006:412).

Concerning technical equipment Sweden is well-advanced in terms of water provisioning and sewage management. This country has a full length of water mains reaching to 67,000 kilometers along with sewage systems of 92,000 kilometers - both of these figures do not include connections for non-state-controlled houses). Moreover, there are approximately 2000 state-run water plants and about the same amount of sewage treatment locations in Sweden (Mattisson & Thomasson,

2010/12).

Surface water beside ground water are available and consumed as sources of drinking water.

Although the ground water is normally better in terms of quality compared to surface water, ample resources for ground water do not exist so as to provide the entire citizens of the country. As an alternative, techniques are carried out for artificial infiltration through which the benefits of groundwater are accomplished and subsequently used as a result. (Mattisson & Thomasson,

2010/12)

As drinking water is abundant and easily available in Sweden, the need for saving water is neither felt nor practiced in overall. At least there is no plan to develop an outlook in this regard. Saving water could be used as a tool to decrease the tension on the water and sewage treatment sites.

But, it will create an issue in case the stream of water becomes too unrushed as this will lead in rising the time for water remaining and being kept in the mains and might therefore, harm the quality of water (Mattisson & Thomasson, 2010/12).

Although nearly half of the infrastructure has been created since 35 years ago, the expenditures of maintenance and resuming for drinking water mains - which already existed – as well as the sewage system is growing. As it is very expensive to redevelop the outdated combined system, other alternatives to promote the system are being considered. Having the capability of managing both the expenditures of maintenance for existing system as well as simultaneously upgrading this system and adapting to more current environmental standards, has laid Sweden into a challenge in terms of water and waste water management (Mattisson & Thomasson, 2010/12).

This is precisely one of the main issues that we tend to understand and address - as the purpose of this research project for Sweden’s specific regions - and accordingly, to suggest what ought to be done in order to dissolve the relevant issues.

3. Case study

The focus of this research is primarily on Lilla Edet municipality - in Västra Götaland County situated in the west of Sweden - with 14,109 inhabitants, estimated at 2019-12-31 (Lilla Edet.

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.citypopulation.de/). However, I selected two more municipalities as alternatives in case Lilla Edet’s local government and the people in affliction were not willing to participate in my interviews. Then, the second alternative would be Ale municipality, located the same as Lilla Edet in Västra Götaland County in Sweden, with a population of approximately 31,402 - estimated at 2019-12-31 (Ale. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://citypopulation.de/).

Figure 1, Västra Götaland County

Figure 1 (Dalsland Geography. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.jfredpeterson.com/sweden/geography.htm).

The area of Västra Götaland County is highlighted in red. Lilla Edet at the top and Ale municipality underneath are located nearby each other on the map.

The third would be Råneå community, situated in Luleå Municipality in Norrbotten County located in Northern Sweden with inhabitants of 2,018 - estimated at 2019-12-31 (Råneå. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.citypopulation.de/). As we can see, Råneå is so small that it does not have a separate official website and is officially then governed by Luleå municipality.

In this chapter, we further address the geographical and natural environment of Lilla Edet municipality as all of these aspects influence the water distribution system of Lilla Edet. There is a giant water resource in Västra Götaland County of Sweden, which has got a key role in providing water for the entire region including Lilla Edet municipality. Below, we address the characteristics and the main role of this river in details, which contributes into this area of Sweden affecting all the municipalities more or less including Lilla Edet municipality. Later within this chapter, we briefly cover the features of Lule River and the environment in which Råneå community is situated, within

Luleå Municipality in the far north of Sweden.

3.1. Göta River

Göta River is the most enormous system in Sweden in respect of drainage area and mean water flow. The water protection region includes 28 km2. Göta River is very important in terms of social contributions and economic functions, which goes back since long ago as “a shipping route” and

“generator of hydro power”. This river is very precious for nature survival and preservation. It provides the drinking water supply of 700,000 people in Västra Götaland County. The river valley is one of the oldest situated in one of the densest industrial regions in Sweden, famous for an

extremely polluted ground during the phase of history. This region is very exposed to flooding and is also one of the areas in the country, where landslides are very common to occur (Bendz &

Boholm, 2019b). The issues associated with the features of this river have relatively a complex nature and is not easy to be solved quickly as they include diverse risks associated with different perspectives (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b; Boholm, 2009). When it comes to water management, several factors play a key role. These factors include interrelated and some “overlapping responsibilities” within a complex governance system, “regulatory bodies” as well as private players (Boholm, Corvellec and Karlsson, 2012; Karlsson, 2010; Lewis et al., 2013). Below is the list of basic actors that are generally always involved in this process:

1. “The Swedish Transport Authority”, as a national road and railway line operate side by

side the river.

2. Vattenfall, the power-producing company

3. Svenska Kraftnät, a government agency in charge of the national electricity grid

4. “The Swedish Geotechnical Institute” (SGI)

5. Göteborg Vatten, “the city of Gothenburg waterworks organization”

6. The Vänern-Göta Älv River Council

7. The Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management

8. The National Board for Building, Housing and Planning

9. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency

10. The Public Health Agency of Sweden

11. The Swedish Water & Wastewater Association

12. A stakeholder organization for water management established by municipalities (Bendz &

Boholm, 2019b).

It is predicted that climate change and global warmings’ effects would enhance the existing risks concerning drinking water from the Göta River resource in the future (Boholm & Prutzer, 2017).

According to another research, local policy-makers do know that there are a number of issues that the municipalities have to deal in order to meet the requirements and expectations they are accountable for and thus, to supply drinking water for their inhabitants (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b;

Bendz and Boholm, 2018).

Figure 2, Göta River

Figure 2 (Göransson et al., 2013). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The- Goetae-Alv-catchment-left-panel-and-its-section-from-Lake-Vaenern-to-the- Kattegatt_fig6_258787929

Göta River starting at Vänern Lake, passing through several towns and municipalities, finishing in Göteborg city.

3.2. Lule River

The Lule River Basin is located in the far north of Sweden, on top of the country on the map. It flows to the southeast from the Scandinavian Mountains to Bothnian Bay in the Baltic Sea. The basin area is about 25,000 km2. The main river channel is around 350 km long. The average temperature in this regions of Sweden reaches approximately to 2.5°C (1961–1990) per year. As a result, it is a challenge to live in this area and to provide own water as an inhabitant or to distribute water as a local administrator to inhabitants. The average yearly precipitation reaches above 1,000 mm in the upper northwest of the basin, most of which falls as snow. However, in the lower areas of the southeast, it is decreased to 500–600 mm (Graham, Andréasson &

Carlsson, 2007).

Luleå and Råneå are situated in 20 km of each other, on the coast of the county of Norrbotten,

Sweden. Therefore, they are located quite close to one another in the far north of Sweden.

Correspondingly, their natural and geographical features are relatively similar to each other.

Generally speaking the pipe-links feature of “infrastructural systems” and particularly of the so called WSS (the expansion of centralized public water and sewer systems) severely challenge regional environmental conditions since the pipes are spread under the ground as veins in the soil and during the winter time they could be frozen because of the critical conditions. Thus, they demand “hydrological preconditions at both ends” (Söderholm, 2013).

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 3, Luleå Municipality (Rentz, Widerlund, Viklander & Öhlander, 2011).

Figure 4, Lule River (Lule River. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/701455). The river is shown in blue line and marked as

“Lulealven” in red color.

4. Empirical Research: Qualitative data analysis

The empirical process consists of two main phases:

Phase one: Interview with Lilla Edet’s local government and the municipality’s water and wastewater management section in order to identify and understand what the issues actually are.

Phase two: Reaching out to them again in order to present suggestions and potential solutions for the present time and their future, correspondingly based on their current issues. Below the interview outline is elaborated.

4.1. Lilla Edet’s Interview Outline

1. A clear short abstract elaborating the project’s main goal and objectives.

2. The organizational affiliation (JKU), contact information (my supervisor and I)

3. At the beginning of each interview, clarifying the main purpose and objectives of the

research project to each interviewee

4. Expressing my consent to interviewees in an official written form with my signature in

advance via Email as well as expressing it personally in words at the beginning of each

interviews, furthermore each interviewee is granted anonymity in all presentations of

outcomes within this research paper and also later in the future.

5. As for this research it is aimed to protect the full identity of the interviewees, they are

therefore addressed by numbers (1, 2, 3 and 4). Any information in regard to the

interviewees such as gender, age, position and etc. is aimed to be fully protected since

the intended municipality is small and thus, any personal information may lead in

jeopardizing the identity of the interviewees.

The interviews are designed semi-structured, providing space for open questions and raising questions in the course of each interview. They are designed to take approximately between 45 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on each interview’s position (as for example the head of the technical division for water management in the unit water and sewer section would demand more time to ask questions and to address issues). The interviews will be conducted either via phone or video conference depending on the preference of each interviewee.

Therefore, I arranged to interview with people who are in charge of different sections in the local government of the municipality of Lilla Edet so that I can have different perspectives to examine the issues from several angles and therefore, to create possible solutions accordingly. The people who are targeted to be interviewed are as followings:

1. One public administrator in the local government: the head of the municipal administration

2. One person from technical background: the head of the technical division for water

management (the unit water and sewer)

3. One politician, either the chair or vice-chair of the municipal committee responsible for

drinking water issues.

4. One customer/inhabitant regardless of who they are – could be people running businesses

in the municipality and who are dependent on the local government for water provision to

survive their business or could be people who simply live in households and or an

individual who lives alone and consumes water on daily basis in their place of living in the

municipality.

https://www.lillaedet.se/ is the official website of the municipality, from which I have obtained my general and specific information contacts. https://www.ale.se/ is the official website of the municipality of Ale for arraigning my contacts and obtaining information in case Lilla Edet would have no interest to participate in my interviews, which the chances are very slim that they will

ignore to respond me back. Finally, to arrange for my contact requests in case the latter fails, I will be planning to contact the people from Luleå Municipality at https://www.lulea.se/ to obtain information in regard to Råneå community as already mentioned in chapter 3, Råneå has a tiny size in terms of population and therefore, is governed by the municipality of Luleå.

Moreover, it will be absolutely noted that the interview questions must be adapted and changed to some extent in case Lilla Edet fails in response and contacting. Thus, a couple of questions will be altered correspondingly in order to be matched again with the municipality of Ale or later with Råneå community in case Ale fails as well in responding.

4.2. The Interview topics include:

1. Collaboration - regarding who the municipality collaborates with.

2. Communication and inhabitants engagements - how main actors respond to inhabitants’

involvements and how they interact with inhabitants and vice versa.

3. Past and current collaboration on water issues between Lilla Edet’s municipality to or from

different municipalities

4. Identifying risks - concerning drinking water, climate change and knowledge status, links

between climate change and risks to drinking water

5. Identifying risks which are not noted regarding drinking water or the risks that are too much

highlighted concerning drinking water

6. Water works including power failure, outdated technology, operation failure,

disruptions/interruptions during maintenance

7. Pipelines - broken, damaged, blocked, interrupted

8. Lack of knowledge (and awareness)

9. Lack of cooperation and involvement of politicians and or citizens

Based on these eight topics, the following questions have been formulated to conduct the interviews with the responsible people in the municipalities. These questions must be addressed and discussed thoroughly in order to first identify any potential issue arising from the questions and to later find out a practical solution/s accordingly and then to present it/them to the officials.

1. How many kilometers do the pipes cover? → In order to understand your network complexity level and also if they run through remote regions?

2. How many kilometers of water mains are replaced each year and at that rate, how many years would it take to replace the entire system?

3. How many homes does your utility supply drinking water and sewage services for and how many businesses are connected to the utility?

4. How old is the infrastructure?

5. The temperature change for potential bursts in the pipes could lead to spikes in consumption and other structural problem. If you ever experienced?

6. How much would be approximately your non-revenue water per year? AND How do you actually know how much water you're losing?

7. How much would be “unplanned water supply interruptions” per property per year?

8. What do water leaks and water main breaks cost your water system each year?

9. Who pays for all the damages when a water main breaks?

10. How accurate are your water meters?

11. What steps does the utility take to find and repair leaks before they become major breaks?

12. What is the average pressure in your water distribution system and how is it managed to avoid unnecessarily high pressure?

13. How much is Lilla Edet dependent on the use of Göta River as a water supply?

14. Who are the central actors in order to consider the idea of a start up as a solution to the current situation?

The following questions have been formulated to interview one customer in Lilla Edet so as to look at the issues (if any) through the eyes of customer and to obtain a better understanding from an additional perspective than the official or affiliated people:

1. Do you provide your own water for consumption? How? If not, who is responsible to do

so?

2. Are you satisfied with the water and sewage system and services of your municipality? To

what extent?

3. How is the quality of water?

4. Is the local government active in taking responsibility and resolving inhabitants’ issues?

To what extent and how often?

5. As a customer, are you ever engaged in your community regarding problems with water?

How?

6. As a customer, are you a part of the communication to the local government? To what

extent and how? (In other words, does the local government value your participation in the

community regarding the water issues?)

Further details or additional responses will be find out with the interviewee as already mentioned the interviews are all semis-structured. Thus, there is always space for further information - if any

- from customer.

As the municipal responsibilities consist of a wide span and as some regions are more regarded compared to others in political and public debates (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b), we therefore additionally, are going to find out in the interviews how much attention would Lilla Edet’s municipality receive from the authorities at the local and national level. Moreover, as water provision for citizens counts mainly towards the responsibilities of municipality’s officials (Bendz

& Boholm, 2019b), we are going to investigate how much the officials of Lilla Edet care for their municipality and inhabitants regarding water distribution and supply and that how much they would welcome new ideas and insights of this research project as final solutions.

5. Startup as a solution, designing a business model

In this chapter, we address the company which I have selected as a potential solution for the identified issues of the municipality after conduction of interviews.

TaKaDu is a leading software company in the clean tech. sector. As a startup, the company was founded in the year of 2009 by Amir Peleg who is also the CEO of TaKaDu since then in Israel.

Peleg designed a unique software service that applies algorithms and statistical analysis in order to detect problems within a specific water utility system. These problems could reach from simple leaks to full on pipe bursts that would be responsible for an interrupted service of the water utility.

Water utilities are operating all over the globe, whether it would be a highly developed or a third world country, water utilities are used by a majority of people on the earth. Bearing this in mind, one can already imagine what a vast network these utilities must span over the whole globe.

Utilities can be either publicly or privately owned or can be a mixture of the both. Over all, there are more than 250,000 water utilities worldwide in varying sizes and scopes. The cost of water also varies a lot over the whole globe depending mostly on the cost of water processing, delivery and maintenance of the infrastructure. Due to the very expensive upkeep and sadly, also sometimes negligence the utilities are very often in a dismal state, causing immense drinking water losses all over the globe, also called non-revenue water (NRW) (Ofek and Preble, 2017).

According to TaKaDu’ estimates the overall losses globally rank between 25 up to 30 % of the total water supply. As clean drinking water is becoming more and more scarce and valuable, good utilities are starting to change their tactics and repair leaky pipes and try to get their losses down as well as illegal water thefts. Not only has the consciousness of water utility managers but also penalties for lost drinking water from some governments brought more incentives to proactively

work on the problem. Realizing these problems, Peleg decided to look into the matter and quickly realized that the problems in fixing leaky pipes was to large extent to be found in inefficient data analysis hindering the effective problem solution. He therefore designed TaKaDu’s software service, with a team of experts. The service software is designed to monitor the whole drinking water distribution of a utility, while the most groundbreaking part of it is the algorithm that takes into account not just current data but also historical data, already collected through previous existent measuring points. Thus, enabling the system to compare the stats and data to give early time warnings of potential water leaks, map those leaks geographically, as well as help prioritize the events according to their severity. Additionally, every result comes with an individual graph making it easier to spot spikes and lows. The inclusion of historic data allows TaKaDu to determine what changes in distribution are within a normal parameter and which are not. With this system in place water losses can be decreased up to 30 % in the first twelve months and be detected around two weeks sooner than usual. This results in a massive amount of saved water and money due to sinking loss rates as well as quicker and more effective repair processes (Ofek and Preble, 2017).

6. Running into an unexpected insight

This thesis originally aims to contribute to research concerning the efficiency and effectiveness of the local government of Lilla Edet’s municipality at different layers as well as inhabitants’ engagements in the community for a facilitated water distribution system. While I made extensive efforts and spend a long time to reach out to my interviewees in the local government of Lilla

Edet’s municipality through direct and indirect contacts, very surprisingly I faced ignorance leading in the following question:

Why responsible people would NOT be interested in a research that not only would aim to identify any issue in regard to their water utility system and distribution to their citizens, but also aims in figuring out practical solutions for a facilitated water provision to their inhabitants.

If the politicians and decision makers are conscious that public awareness and citizens involvements are two key tools if a change is supposed to take place as a step towards solving water issues (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b), then why would they neglect to be talked to?

Interesting enough the people whom I decided to first reach out, were the people from technical background: the heads of the technical division for water management (the unit water and sewer) from the Lilla Edet’s municipality and later on, Råneå municipality. Thus, they were not policy makers. Then how would I have expected that policy makers would have participated in my interviews.

Moreover, Ale municipality’s general services did not even contact me back to guide me and to further connect me with the responsible people in comparison with Lilla Edet and Råneå municipality that at least connected me with the targeted interviewees but very surprisingly, after

several emails the intended interviewees from these two municipalities did not respond to my emails under any circumstances.

As a result, these are the plausible assumptions that can be proposed for further discussions:

1. Either the targeted people of my interviews, did not have positive experiences with

research in the past as a reason not to be interested in replying back.

2. They did not take this project seriously as they would not think that an international student

residing in another country in Europe would be really making efforts to identify and

understand their problems and correspondingly proposing a solution. Thus, it would not

be worth to invest in this project by participating in the interviews of this student from

Austria and to further involved. Thus, the main issue of not responding back could have

been simply the lack of trust.

3. Or they simply are ignorant authorities who have no interest and no open mind to be part

of a project that would actually aim to help out their burdens and figure out a potential

solution for their current issues at least.

In the most optimistic scenario, we can assume number one is true. However, we can never surely know what has been really the reason why the responsible people from the three municipalities did not respond back in case of Lilla Edet and the other two alternatives. Even though, it has been aimed to be very flexible with Lilla Edet’s municipality as additionally it was suggested they have the interview questions via Email and thus, the interview questions indeed were sent to them via

Email. Yet, after several contacts as reminder to fill in the questions to be sent back via Email, all the efforts unfortunately did not pay off.

7. Further Discussions

As discussed thoroughly in details in the previous chapter with what I experienced, this led to investigating why responsible people would neglect to be talked to? Therefore, in this chapter we look into the literatures in order to find out the possible reasons for explaining their behavior.

The water control system in Sweden is basically addressed “as a fragmentized type II-structure”.

Meaning that it has no clear “power directions” among a great number of various official actors who are engaged in this process. In addition, there is always the urge for making priorities but with unclear key instructions that are necessary to provide guidance among ecological water objectives and economic ones and furthermore, other social aims. Also, the power structures in the control system and in the hand of the authorities are not aligned as their connection to water differ on diverse ecological scales. Moreover, the Swedish water governance is split into five

“Water Districts”, where one “County Administrative Board” in every district is appointed to control the water district as “Water District Authority” abbreviated as WDA (Vattenmyndighet) in Swedish language.

By looking into the hierarchy levels as well as policy consistency through the water control system of this country we face eight major issues:

1. It is not clear to the people in charge through the system that “who is doing what”!

2. The WDAs do not have enough right of possession for water problems so as to keep

officials at the national level and also municipalities responsible for submitting outcomes.

3. The Water Boards indisputably is involved actively in water management policy-making.

Yet, problems emerge regarding participation processes. Furthermore, it is not clear which

role the Water Boards is taking, ultimately leading in misalignment between the scale of

ecological processes and the scale of administration and control. This impairs the

hydrological mindset at the local level through “Swedish Water Districts”.

4. Although great competency exists through the WDAs concerning how to measure and

detect environmental quality standards (EQS), the slow progress concerning the

“Programs of Measures” through the municipalities shows that potential challenges exist

regarding comprehending the EQS and or the absence for resources to execute this

knowledge at the municipal level.

5. Forcing municipalities as well as to some degree governmental officials to executive the

Programs of Measures is a challenge because doing so requires financial resources

provision concerning the execution of plans and process – including the expenditures for

verified measures and also the administrative expenses in municipalities/agencies for

conducting them.

6. Policy inconsistency triggers frequent objective conflicts, blocking the execution process.

In more details, recurring objective conflicts is the point at which water quality problems

are usually overshadowed by other social priorities.

7. The absence of clear key instructions concerning how to manage reoccurring objective

conflicts when trying the diverse regulations is another challenge associated to water

bureaucrats.

8. The need for a legitimate qualification concerning how to deal with environmental quality

standards is missing in Swedish courts.

Combined, all the issues which we have thoroughly explained above would challenge the current system to eligibly function and generate water on the entire level (Söderberg, 2016).

There are certainly two key factors that the Swedish water management needs to have:

1. Solid and consistent policy

2. Clear power structures

The combination of these two factors would then turn the system eligibly function. Otherwise, it will negatively influence policy implementations especially that the Swedish water management is run in a complex governance system. Thus, these two factors mentioned above need to be present in case we want to deliver pleasant results. With coherent policies and centralized instructions “good ecological status” for Swedish water will then be accomplished. Otherwise, inconsistent policies will certainly affect policy implementations negatively because of power conflict occurring constantly among various rulers. Moreover, because economic and other societal goals would usually set aside environmental goals, it will be even more challenging if there is no clear central guidance for policy implementation in a complex power structures

(Söderberg, 2016).

As elaborated above, the main argument that has always been raised is that approaches to socio- technical changes seem to override the analysis of agency for example by governments as a tool for more sophisticated, conscious and constructive processes of regime transition (Greenwood,

2012; Smith et al., 2005; Söderholm, 2013).

Communication and cooperation between local policy makers and institutions, organizations and citizens should be substantially regarded in order to manage risks and hazards. Furthermore, collaboration would be key for sustainable water management in overall (Bendz & Boholm,

2019a). Finally, this research suggests that “trust” would be a focal core of creating cooperation

(Bendz & Boholm, 2019a; Warm, 2011).

Furthermore, it would be interesting to note that there is the so-called “Swedish municipal planning monopoly” which refers to the fact that municipalities play an important role in planning and management of water as well as land – also concerning agricultural and forestry problems in areas associated to own municipality. Yet, this is threatened because “water authorities” have appeared as qualified water authorities since 2007 in Sweden to take control of water. Although municipalities hold on some control over water at the local level, a likely development of dual system for water management would still threaten their autonomy. Should not an effective collaboration between water authorities and municipalities is accomplished in Sweden, resilient water management may be at threat as a result (Andersson, et al., 2012; Carter, 2007).

Finally, last but most important is that if there is plenty of water and politicians are able to handle the issues, then inhabitants are likely to carelessly continue to consume water with no limitation in any possible way it can be consumed. So, generally speaking they will neglect potential threats associated with water. On the other hand, warnings from scientists about problems relevant to water in the future and the already detected results in regard to global warming and climate change that we are dealing today, can no longer be denied even in countries in which water is an infinite resource and affordably-priced for citizens (Bendz & Boholm, 2019b).

It should not be surprising for us that what we are encountering today is exactly the result of what we ignored yesterday when scientists already warned about the Corona-virus pandemic and its consequences in case politicians would not take the warnings seriously by being attentive, organized, and responsive. Indeed still politicians are experiencing the result of their “earlier ignorance” as we are again in the second luck-down because of increasing cases. Unfortunately,

people are actually the ones who are paying the price of authorities’ ignorance around the world for catastrophes as such. Although being personally experienced of such refusal by the selected authorities for this research, I deeply hope this will be a huge lesson for all politicians of any kind or background to learn not to repeat the same mistake in the future, especially in regard to water issues of any kind. Let’s all hope for that, however, let us in the first place choose only the right politicians: “the ones who truly care and who are fully aware of our current global challenges to save the future for our children.” We need to take actions today in order to save tomorrow.

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9. Figures

Figure 1: Västra Götaland County

Dalsland Geography. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.jfredpeterson.com/sweden/geography.htm [Downloaded on 07.08.2020]

Figure 2: Göta River

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[Downloaded on 07.08.2020]

Figure 3: Luleå Municipality

Rentz, R., Widerlund, A., Viklander, M., & Öhlander, B. (2011). Impact of Urban Stormwater on

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Figure 4: Lule River

Lule River. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/701455 [Downloaded on

07.08.2020]