RESEARCH ARTICLE On the complex causal relationship of barriers to sustainable urban water management: a fuzzy multi-criteria analysis Egberto F. Selerio a,b , Redjie D. Arcadio c , Gerwine J. Medio c , Jon Redgie P. Natad c and Girly A. Pedregosa c a Department of Industrial Engineering, University of San Jose-Recoletos, Cebu City, Philippines; b Department of Industrial Engineering, University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines; c Department of Industrial Technology, Cebu Technological University, Cebu City, Philippines ABSTRACT A few studies on urban water management have engaged in identifying Sustainable Urban Water Management (SUWM) barriers. Most of these studies proposed many strategies to address them. However, for a developing country like the Philippines, it is impractical to employ all of them at once, especially when resources are scarce. Furthermore, due to the system complexity, conventional analysis, which approaches SUWM barriers in isolation, may not be sufcient. With an end goal of developing leverage strategies based on the causal relationship of SUWM barriers, integration of the Fuzzy Decision- Making and Trial Evaluation Laboratory (FDEMATEL), and Fuzzy C-means Algorithm (FCA) is proposed. The approach was employed to identify the critical SUWM barriers among a set of SUWM barriers based on their causal relationship. Critical SUWM barriers were identifed. Insights and proposals for addressing the critical SUWM barriers were proposed herewith to guide urban water managers. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 28 July 2020 Accepted 26 October 2020 KEYWORDS Urban water; water management; sustainability; Multi-criteria Decision Making; Fuzzy DEMATEL; Fuzzy C-means Algorithm 1. Introduction Among the outstanding environmental difculties in urban set- tings is the inevitable decline of freshwater. This problem poses several challenges to the security of its supply and equitable allocation. Its impact on urban societies shows prominence through the rising marginal cost of water provision. While this has forced people to be more efcient in their water usage, there is still so much to consider in the management of urban waters, especially when viewed in the lenses of sustainability. In light of accelerating stressors from climate change, population growth, and economic development, the management of urban water should also consider sustaining healthy, functioning ecosystems. In response to this observed need, the idea of sustainable urban water management (SUWM) was conceived. Among the problems tackled by SUWM are loss or waste of water, the efciency of water use, and recycling and reuse of water. These issues are addressed in SUWM with an end goal of extending the availability of water supply for future or alternative uses. In this pursuit, the economic, social, and environmental impacts of employed strategies are considered as well. Among the strategies discussed in previous literature are sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS), low impact development (LID), water sensitive urban design (WSUD), and sponge city (Brown, Farrelly, and Keath 2009; Brown, Keath, and Wong 2009). Several approaches have been used in employing SUWM, including water recovery, wastewater recycling, water supply expansion, water quality matching, partial system decentraliza- tion, and ‘grey’ and ‘green’ infrastructure utilization, among others. Among the benefts of these strategies are amplifed water conservation and efciency, rapid stormwater adminis- tration and dissemination, source separation, water reclama- tion and recycling, treatment of distributed water, heat recovery, organic management for energy production, and nutrient recycling (Daigger 2012). While several methods were detailed in previous literature, the implementation of SUWM strategies remains relatively low (Winz, Trowsdale, and Brierley 2014), which warrants the inquiry, ‘What inhibits the adoption of sustainable urban water manage- ment?’ Apparently, manifold barriers to SUWM adoption persist, which are surprisingly well studied in existing literature (e.g. (Habtemariam, Herslund, and Mguni 2019; Luker and Harris 2019; Wihlborg, Sörensen, and Alkan Olsson 2019). With this realization, the inquiry now turns on the analysis of SUWM barriers so that strategies may be employed to address them. Although SUWM barriers were widely identifed, surprisingly, only a few studies profer strategies for overcoming them. Although SUWM barriers were already established with some empirical support, it is worth noting that some, if not all, of these barriers may infuence other barriers due to their loosely defned boundaries and overlaps (Ocampo, Tan, and Sia 2018). To provide clear and valid analyses leading to the identifcation of entry points and strategies for intervention, sustainability research should go beyond describing and enumerating barriers towards explaining them (Eisenack et al. 2014; Selerio Jr. et al. 2020). While studies occasionally indicate the importance of a dynamic per- spective and consideration of causal interdependencies among barriers, these issues are rarely explored explicitly. In the Philippines, several reports are presented by promi- nent international organizations, which documents the status of its urban waters in the context of sustainability, e.g. (Dole and Balucan 2006; JICA 2010; Johannessen et al. 2019; OECD 2011). While these studies identifed a plethora of challenges and various proposals for addressing them, these proposals are rarely implemented. As a consequence of the scarcity of CONTACT Egberto F. Selerio 20102931@usc.edu.ph URBAN WATER JOURNAL https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2020.1846064 © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group