Urban Water Security: Definition and Assessment Framework

Abstract

Achieving urban water security is a major challenge for many countries. While several studies have assessed water security at a regional level, many studies have also emphasized the lack of assessment of water security and application of measures to achieve it at the urban level. Recent studies that have focused on measuring urban water security are not holistic, and there is still no agreed-upon understanding of how to operationalize and identify an assessment framework to measure the current state and dynamics of water security. At present, there is also no clearly defined and widely endorsed definition of urban water security. To address this challenge, this study provides a systematic approach to better understand urban water security, with a working definition and an assessment framework to be applied in peri-urban and urban areas. The proposed working definition of urban water security is based on the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goal on water and sanitation and the human rights on water and sanitation. It captures issues of urban-level technical, environmental, and socio-economic indicators that emphasize credibility, legitimacy, and salience. The assessment framework depends on four main dimensions to achieve urban water security: Drinking water and human beings, ecosystem, climate change and water-related hazards, and socio-economic factors (DECS). The framework further enables the analysis of relationships and trade-off between urbanization and water security, as well as between DECS indicators. Applying this framework will help governments, policy-makers, and water stakeholders to target scant resources more effectively and sustainably. The study reveals that achieving urban water security requires a holistic and integrated approach with collaborative stakeholders to provide a meaningful way to improve understanding and managing urban water security.

A Comprehensive Index for Measuring Water Security in an Urbanizing World: The Case of Pakistan’s Capital

“…where w i and w j are the weights assigned to variables and indicators respectively. However, for the sake of simplification, and because of the insufficiency of necessary data, all variables and indicators are assumed to be of identical impact and significance in this case study and hence, are weighted equally, i.e., w i = 1/n and w j = 1/m [33]. Eventually, scores corresponding to all five dimensions are averaged to calculate the UWSI for the city of Islamabad (Equation (5)).…”

“…Lautze and Manthrithilake (2012) follow a similar approach to estimate an overall water security index for countries in the Asia Pacific [32]. Nonetheless, the majority of these frameworks are established on regional and national scales which make them less suitable on a local level [33]. Moreover, scaling down water security assessments to a city level can offer additional benefits in the understanding and implementation of the relatively intricate concept [1].…”

“…Jensen and Wu (2018) adopt the process analysis method to establish several indicators primarily focusing on water availability, risks, and governance in Hong Kong and Singapore [7]. Babel et al (2017) and Aboelenga et al 2019propose an all-encompassing urban water security framework that captures social, environmental, economic, and organizational aspects of urban water into account [33,38].…”

Assessing Water Security in Water-Scarce Cities: Applying the Integrated Urban Water Security Index (IUWSI) in Madaba, Jordan

“…The methodology of the paper is based on Aboelnga et al [31] assessment framework of urban water security as a means of understanding the following four dimensions: drinking water, the ecosystem, climate change and water-related hazards, and socioeconomic aspects-called the DECS framework. The methodology can be summarised as follows:…”

“…Tables 1-4 represent the indicators on a common scale-since they have different units-from 1 to 5, where 1 is poor and 5 is excellent. The thresholds of the indicators are relevant to be applied in any city and based on detailed literature reviews in the domain of water security [31].…”