Abstract
The urban water resource utilization efficiency is of great significance to solve the water crisis and promote the sustainable development of cities. The current paper aims to help areas with low water utilization efficiency in China to improve cross-regional coordination and improve water resource efficiency. Therefore, the current paper uses an SBM-undesirable model to study the water utilization efficiency of 14 cities in Gansu Province from 2010 to 2018. Then the Dagum Gini coefficient and kernel density estimation methods are used to study the regional differences in efficiency and its evolution trend. The results of the study are as follows: (1) There is a relatively large gap in water resource utilization efficiency among cities in Gansu Province. (2) The overall regional differences in water resource utilization efficiency in Gansu Province generally show a trend of increasing and then shrinking between 2010 and 2018. The inter-regional differences generally show an upward trend. (3) Water resource utilization efficiency of three regions has the characteristics of divergent distribution, and the degree of differentiation continues to decline. The conclusions and suggestions were provided for improving the sustainable development of urban water systems.
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The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all participants in the study. This work is supported by the Department of Science and Technology of Sichuan Province Fund (2021JDRC0002).
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This paper was written and was carried out by QG in collaboration with all co-authors. Data were collected by JL and SL. The first and final drafts were written by JL and XL. The defects of the draft were critiqued by QG and GG. The results were analyzed by XL and SL. The research and key elements of models were reviewed by QG. The writing work of corresponding parts and the major revisions of this paper were completed by JL and XL. The revised part of the article was all completed by JL and XL.
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Liang, X., Li, J., Guo, G. et al. Urban water resource utilization efficiency based on SBM-undesirable–Gini coefficient–kernel density in Gansu Province, China. Environ Dev Sustain 25, 13015–13034 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-022-02601-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-022-02601-2