Safe drinking water: critical components of effective inter-agency relationships.

The paper supports the development of evidence-based emergency management frameworks of cooperation between agencies in the area of drinking water and public health, as part of developing the overall risk management culture within water utilities. We employed a qualitative research design to understand critical gaps in inter-agency relations that aggravated past drinking water and health incidents and from these identified determinants of effective relationships. We identified six critical institutional relationship components that were deficient in past incidents, namely proactivity, communication, training, sharing expertise, trust and regulation.