A Data-Driven Project to Data-Driven Utilities

Jordan's traditional water sources are scarce and declining, and non-revenue water (NRW) levels are high. NRW is water lost through leaky pipes, theft, and metering errors. The major challenges to reducing NRW are a lack of good data, and long-standing water utility management practices. The USAID NRW Project focuses on leveraging measurements to decide on water loss reduction interventions. The data-driven approach to the developing and implementing of funding agreements with Jordan's water entities, which is based on learning from previous projects, enabled the collection of large amounts of accurate data on what works best to reduce water loss.

Following the success of the evidence-based approach to reducing water losses used in the NRW Project, USAID and the implementing partner were motivated to incorporate this approach into the core operations of water utility management. The strategic transition from a data-driven project to data-driven water utilities, which began through the implementation of various interventions under the NRW Project, aims to optimize water management, improve operational efficiency, and enable data-driven decision-making. This brought about advancements in systems and infrastructure, and also led to a remarkable shift in the culture within the water utility. The knowledge and experience gained throughout the life of the NRW Project greatly boosted the ability of the utilities' staff to effectively manage NRW reduction activities and interventions. Overall, the CLA approach used in the NRW Project can be seen as the first step in the transformation to smart utilities in Jordan.