Strategic Management of Separation of Drinking Water from Sanitation Water in the City of Yazd by Using AHP and SWOT Analysis

In the current situation, water resources are facing quantitative and qualitative issues which leave us with no other choice except to change our perspective towards consumption management. Separating drinking water from sanitary water is one of the components of the consumption quality management. This study was carried out based on SWOT analysis and AHP. At first, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of separation of drinking water from sanitation water was obtained by survey of experts’ opinions. Priorities among SWOT factors and inconsistency rate of matrices was obtained by pairwise comparison matrices. In SWOT analysis the internal factor evaluation matrix (IFE), the external factors evaluation (EFE) and the internal and external factors (IE) were used. IFE and EFE matrices showed the final score of internal and external factors as 2.51 and 1.78, respectively. This indicated that the condition in Yazd are favorable in terms of internal factors while it is not positive in terms of using opportunities or staying away from threats. According to the internal and external factors, strategies are considered as drinking water distribution network (pipeline for drinking water) (SO), Governmental centralized drinking water distribution network (ST), private sector centralized drinking water distribution network (WO) and private sector mobile distribution systems of drinking water (WT). IE matrix showed that the Water and Sewage Company should choose the ST strategy (centralized drinking water distribution network) to avoid the threats and as a solution to water scarcity in 5- to 10-yr horizon