Water systems and particularly wastewater treatment may only improve or keep high-quality service if their performance is continuously measured and benchmarked against peers. This paper presents a case-study developed under the Portuguese Initiative on Water Quality, Treatment and Energy (iEQTA-WWTP), involving 7 water utilities, and focused on the performance assessment of 23 urban wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) covering a wide range of treatment sequences and capacities (700-54000 m³/d). An earlier developed system of key performance indicators (KPIs) with reference values was used to assess the plants’ overall performance for effectiveness and reliability, sludge production and energy efficiency taking into consideration, whenever adequate, treatment technology, treated wastewater volume and influent characteristics. This application proved the soundness of the KPI system and its reference values for a blind comparison among WWTPs but also for treatment type- and capacity-specific clustering, ultimately supporting water utilities in a continuous practice of WWTP performance improvement.

水系统，尤其是废水处理，只有不断评估其性能并与同业进行比较，才能改善或保持高质量的服务。本文介绍了一项由葡萄牙水质，处理和能源倡议（iEQTA-WWTP）开发的案例研究，涉及7个自来水公司，重点研究了23个城市污水处理厂（WWTP）的绩效评估，涵盖了处理顺序和处理能力（700-54000 m ³/ d）。较早开发的具有参考值的关键性能指标（KPI）系统用于评估工厂的整体性能，包括有效性，可靠性，污泥产生和能源效率，并在适当时考虑处理技术，处理后的废水量和进水特性。该应用程序证明了KPI系统的健全性及其在污水处理厂之间进行盲目比较的参考值，还证明了其在处理类型和容量特定群集方面的盲目性，最终为水务公司持续改进污水处理厂性能提供了支持。