Assessing the performance of irrigation schemes with minimum data on waterdeliveries

This paper highlights an approach to assessing the performance of the water delivery system from the perspective of farmers. The methodology uses the concept of fuzzy set theory to analyse the responses from farmers concernin g their perception of the irrigation service provided. The paper takes the view that as part of performance assessment of schemes where data on water delivery are not available or their integrity cannot be guaranteed, it is p ossible to use farmers' assessment to determine how effective the water del ivery system is. The methodology was applied in a case study of Dawhenya ir rigation scheme in Ghana. By decomposing the utility into reliability, timi ng and tractability and subsequently applying fuzzy set theory to the analy sis of the linguistic responses of farmers, this study has enabled us to as sess how well the water delivery system is performing from the point of vie w of the most important stakeholders - the farmers. The analysis indicated that the most important factor was reliability followed by tractability and timing in that order, while the farmers' level of satisfaction with the fa ctors in order of increasing satisfaction was: timing, reliability and trac tability. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.