Applying the Pareto Principle to Remote Community Seawater Desalination on Torres Strait Islands

Abstract

On the isolated islands of the Torres Strait, between the tip of Australia and Papua New Guinea, the operation and design of seawater desalination units have evolved since the early 1990s. The Pareto Principle, or 80–20 rule, which infers that 80 percent of the effects result from 20 percent of the causes, best describes the evolution. In the context of small-scale desalination, the implied meaning is that by using a simple, manual desalination system that requires a small amount of operator input, the system can achieve at least 80 percent performance of that expected from a highly monitored and managed system.