Interpreting NRW: Understanding Underlying Conditions, Performance, Behavior and Outcomes

Introduction

Non-Revenue Water (NRW) is usually most visible through its operational problems: leaking pipes, inaccurate meters, illegal connections, billing failures, infrastructure damage, and water theft. These problems demand attention because they directly contribute to water and revenue losses. Yet the analyses undertaken so far suggest that what utilities see on the surface tells only part of the story. Looking at NRW through governance revealed that policies, institutions, financing, information, technical expertise, and capacity may already exist, yet performance can remain weak when the connections among them are fragmented. Looking at the utility-customer relationship revealed how service experience can influence public trust and behavior, creating feedback that can either strengthen or weaken future utility performance. Root cause analysis then showed that many of the problems commonly identified as causes of NRW may themselves be symptoms of deeper conditions. Bringing these perspectives together through the SIDA Improvement Cycle raises a more important question: What are these different signals collectively telling us about why NRW persists?

When the three perspectives come together

The three analyses tell different parts of the same story. Governance establishes the environment within which NRW is managed. It influences how responsibilities are coordinated, how resources are allocated, how information moves, how decisions are made, and how actors are held accountable. The governance assessment showed that weaknesses in these connections can undermine performance even where the individual functions themselves are present. But governance does not operate only within institutions. Its consequences are experienced through service delivery. Customers experience the utility through water availability, billing accuracy, responsiveness, communication, fairness, and the way complaints are handled. These experiences influence whether customers see value in continuing to cooperate with the formal system. This is where public trust becomes important. Better performance can strengthen trust and encourage behaviors such as paying bills, reporting leaks, protecting infrastructure, and participating in utility engagements. Poor performance can contribute to declining trust and behaviors such as unauthorized reconnections, meter bypasses, disengagement, or exit from the utility system. These behaviors can then influence NRW and future utility performance.

Root cause analysis completes the picture by asking us not to stop where the problem becomes visible. A leak, an illegal connection, a billing dispute, or a damaged piece of infrastructure may require immediate action, but the event itself may have emerged from conditions that developed much earlier. The customer who illegally reconnects after an unresolved billing dispute and the pastoralist community that repeatedly vandalizes an air valve to obtain water for livestock demonstrate how apparently similar NRW problems can have very different stories beneath them. Taken together, these perspectives suggest that persistent NRW is not simply the accumulation of individual failures. It is what becomes visible when weaknesses in governance, relationships, behaviors, and operational performance begin to reinforce one another.

What the NRW System is telling us

Four Key Insights Emerging from a System‑Level Interpretation of NRW are:

What we see is not necessarily where the problem begins. Utilities understandably respond to visible problems. Leaks are repaired, meters replaced, illegal connections disconnected, damaged infrastructure restored, and billing errors corrected. These actions remain essential. But repeatedly responding to the same types of problems should also raise another question: What keeps allowing them to return?

Behavior matters, but behavior has context. Customers make decisions about whether to report leaks, pay bills, protect infrastructure, seek legitimate connections, bypass meters, reconnect illegally, or disengage from the utility. Staff and leaders also make decisions that affect NRW through workmanship, enforcement, responsiveness, resource allocation, accountability, and management priorities. The root cause analysis showed how these behaviors can provide the pathway through which deeper conditions become visible in everyday operational performance.

Relationships can reinforce performance in either direction. Public trust illustrates this clearly. When customers experience reliable service, fair billing, responsiveness, and credible engagement, cooperation can strengthen. When those experiences deteriorate, trust and cooperation can weaken. The resulting behaviors can then affect NRW and utility performance, creating feedback that influences future customer experience.

The conditions beneath NRW are interconnected. Governance, leadership, accountability, institutional coordination, financing, information, learning, capacity, and public trust do not operate independently. Weakness in one area can constrain another, while improvement in one area can create opportunities elsewhere. Understanding persistent NRW therefore requires moving between what is visible and what lies beneath it, while also paying attention to the relationships that connect underlying conditions, performance, behavior, and outcomes.

Bringing the System together

The emerging picture is therefore more than a straight line from one root cause to one NRW outcome. Governance and institutional conditions influence how the utility operates. Utility performance shapes the experiences of customers and other stakeholders. Those experiences can influence trust and behavior. Behaviors contribute to operational outcomes, including NRW. NRW then affects revenue, service delivery, investment capacity, and future utility performance. The governance assessment demonstrated this dynamic financially: high water losses reduce revenue, while reduced revenue can constrain the resources needed to address the conditions contributing to those losses. The trust analysis demonstrated a similar feedback relationship between utility performance, public trust, customer behavior, and NRW. Together, these relationships help explain why NRW can remain persistent even when utilities continue investing in technical interventions. Figure 1 presents The NRW System Pathway: From Underlying Conditions to Outcomes. The figure brings the three analyses together, showing how underlying conditions influence utility performance and stakeholder experience, how these shape relationships and behaviors, and how these pathways ultimately influence NRW outcomes.

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The NRW System Pathway: From Underlying Conditions to Outcomes.

The figure illustrates how underlying conditions shape utility performance and customer experience, which in turn influence relationships and trust. These relationships shape behavior and ultimately affect NRW outcomes. The figure also recognizes that underlying conditions can influence NRW outcomes directly, alongside the pathway through performance, relationships, and behavior. Together, these relationships show why sustainable NRW reduction requires attention not only to visible water and revenue losses, but also to the conditions and relationships that continually shape them.

What this means for NRW management

Looking beneath the visible problem does not mean that utilities should stop responding to operational failures. A leaking pipe still needs repair. An inaccurate meter still needs replacement. Illegal consumption still requires appropriate enforcement. Billing systems still need to be accurate, and infrastructure must still be protected. The distinction is between solving the immediate problem and preventing the conditions that reproduce it. A utility can repeatedly repair a vandalized air valve, but if the underlying water-access problem remains unaddressed, the incentive for vandalism may remain. A customer can repeatedly be disconnected for unauthorized reconnection, but if an unresolved billing dispute remains at the center of the conflict, enforcement alone may not resolve the wider problem. These experiences from the root cause analysis demonstrate why similar operational responses can produce only temporary improvement when the conditions beneath them remain unchanged. The same principle applies at the institutional level. Policies need implementation. Data need interpretation. Responsibilities need coordination. Financing needs alignment with priorities. Customer engagement needs credible responses. Leadership needs accountability. Technical capability needs an organizational environment that allows it to translate into action. The challenge is therefore not choosing between technical NRW reduction and strengthening the wider system. Sustainable improvement requires both. Fix the problem you can see, while strengthening the conditions that determine whether it comes back.

Reflection

Bringing these three analyses together has changed how I interpret many of the NRW problems I encountered during my time in the water sector. A leaking pipe, an illegal connection, a disputed bill, a damaged air valve, a customer complaint, or a revenue shortfall can easily command immediate attention because it is visible and measurable. What has become clearer to me is that the visible event can also be a signal; an invitation to ask what relationships, decisions, behaviors, or institutional conditions preceded it. This does not make every operational problem unnecessarily complicated. Rather, it encourages us to know when fixing the immediate problem is enough and when recurrence is telling us to look deeper. For me, that is the central lesson from bringing these analyses together: Before deciding what to change, we must understand what the system is telling us.

Conclusion

With this interpretation, the NRW conversation has shifted from focusing on visible symptoms to understanding the conditions, relationships, and system dynamics that explain why those problems persist. The challenge ahead is determining where action will generate the greatest and most sustainable improvement. This is the point where the SIDA Improvement Cycle moves from Interpret to Decide. We now have a clearer picture of why the system behaves as it does. The next task is to determine where to intervene to shift that behavior and change the system’s trajectory. The work of interpretation has given us understanding. The work of decision will turn that understanding into impact answering the question: where should we act to change its direction?

Author: Ernest Chea I Email: ernest.chea@strathmore.edu

SiBI Institute Extern, PhD Candidate, Social Marketing, Strathmore University Business School

Mentor: David Tsetse, Ph.D., Founder and President I SiBI Institute

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