WATSAT – A Practical Tool for Assessing Urban Water Security

Challenge

Authorities in Asian cities need an objective way to quantify urban water security across sectors.

Solution

Develop and apply the Water Security Assessment Tool (WATSAT), giving city stakeholders a way to quantify urban water security.

Overview

Urban water systems in Asia face pressure from climate change, urbanization, and growing demand, which strain supplies and increase flood and drought risks. City authorities need an integrated view of water supply, sanitation, productivity, disasters, environment, and governance, not just isolated statistics.

Mukand S. Babel (Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand) led a project, supported by the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), to build capacity for using a water security assessment framework in Asian cities. The project created the web-based Water Security Assessment Tool, or WATSAT, which combines diverse indicators into a single Water Security Index for city decision-makers.

Conceptual basis and tool design

The project built on an earlier APN-funded framework (ARCP2015-07CMY-Babel) that defined urban water security using five dimensions: water supply and sanitation, water productivity, water-related disasters, water environment, and water governance. The project team turned this framework into the WATSAT web app that helps users organize and enter city data. WATSAT normalizes variable scores and then aggregates and averages them to produce indicator scores, dimension scores, and an overall Water Security Index on a 1–5 scale. A score of less than 1.5 is interpreted as “Poor Water Security,” while greater than 4.5 is “Excellent Water Security.”

Using indicators to capture city realities

WATSAT uses a three-layer structure of dimensions, indicators (e.g., water availability and quality of water supply under the water supply and sanitation dimension, economic value of water under the water productivity dimension, disaster mitigation under the water-related disasters), and variables (e.g., per capita water use) so that city stakeholders can capture local realities while keeping a common framework across cities. The dimensions and indicators stay fixed, and users can set weights at the variable, indicator, and dimension levels. If users do not set weights, WATSAT uses equal weights at all three levels.

The tool groups data entry into familiar categories such as demographic, economic, and environmental data to match how agencies already store information. WATSAT also checks for missing data and inconsistent weights, which supports consistent assessment and comparison within and among cities.

Applying the tool in Bangkok and beyond

The researchers validated WATSAT by applying it to Bangkok, Thailand, using 2017 data from government agencies on population, water supply, public health, and environmental quality. The assessment used a population of 9,005,378 and a total supplied water volume of 1,835 MCM (million m³) per year, entered through WATSAT’s indicator structure. Results showed Bangkok’s overall water security in 2017 as “very good.” The dimension results showed room for improvement in water-related disasters and water environment. Indicator-level results highlighted flood damage and water pollution and indicated a need for more attention to disaster mitigation and preparedness. WATSAT is publicly available at www.watsat.org, where users can run city assessments and export results in Excel format.

WATSAT has been applied in other APN work, including a 2022 training workshop in Bangkok (the subject of APN project AOA2022-02SY-Babel) and in APN project CRRP2024-01MY-Le, which applied it to assess urban water security and nature-based solutions in Mekong Delta cities.

Outcomes and results

• Tool development and dissemination: Developed an online city-scale water security assessment tool (WATSAT) and launched it in the public domain.
• Capacity-building through workshops: Conducted 3 in-person training workshops – in India, Vietnam, and Nepal – training approximately 100 stakeholders, including government authorities, early-career professionals, academics, and practitioners.

Project details

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) under its Scientific Capacity Development Programme (CAPaBLE). Acknowledgments are also extended to Devesh Sharma (Central University of Rajasthan, India), Nguyen Mai Dang (Water Resources University, Vietnam), Raghunath Jha (Tribhuvan University, Nepal), and Victor Shinde (Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand).

Related information

• Project Permalink
• WATSAT tool website
• Related case study: Strengthening Water Security Assessments in Asia with the WATSAT Tool  (AOA2022-02SY-Babel)
• Babel, M. S., Chapagain, K., & Shinde, V. R. (2023). How to measure urban water security? An introduction to the Water Security Assessment Tool (WATSAT). APN Science Bulletin, 13(1), 60–75. doi:10.30852/sb.2023.2166
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