Strengthening Water Security Assessment in Asia with WATSAT Tool

Challenge

Many Asian cities lack standardized tools to assess water security, limiting informed planning and decision-making for sustainable water management.

Solution

The WATSAT tool helps assess urban water security using accessible, data-driven indicators. A workshop trained participants on how to use it.

Overview

The Water Security Assessment Tool (WATSAT) is an interactive, online platform designed to help cities and local governments measure water security across key dimensions. Developed under the APN-funded project, “Building Capacities for Water Security Assessment in Asian Cities,” led by Mukand S. Babel (Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand), the tool was subsequently shared through a focused training activity to support broader capacity building.

In 2022, a training workshop was held at the Water Security and Climate Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. This training built on the outcomes of the previous project by introducing the WATSAT tool to a wider regional audience.

Background

Asian cities face mounting water-related challenges, including resource scarcity, declining quality, and increasing risks from climate change and urbanization. These challenges often go unaddressed due to the absence of clear, localized metrics that decision-makers can use to assess water security in their specific context.

Recognizing this gap, an earlier project developed a conceptual framework for water security assessment and identified key indicators across five dimensions: household, economic, urban, environmental, and resilience to water-related disasters. The WATSAT tool operationalizes this framework, offering users an intuitive platform for data entry, scoring, visualization, and benchmarking.

WATSAT: A practical tool for local governments

With WATSAT, users:

• Enter data for each of the five assessment dimensions
• Assign weights and scores based on context
• Visualize results via easy-to-understand graphs
• Identify strengths and vulnerabilities in water systems

Users can register an account, create city profiles, and input data specific to their locality. The platform returns scores and visualizations that help guide policy planning, investment, and risk management.

At the heart of WATSAT is the Water Security Index (WSI), a composite score that summarizes water security performance across five dimensions: household, economic, urban, environmental, and resilience to water-related disasters.

The WSI is calculated using weighted sub-indicator scores that users provide. After data are entered, WATSAT aggregates and normalizes the scores, generating a clear, comparative visual output that highlights a city’s relative strengths and weaknesses. (See the peer-reviewed article Babel et al. [2020] for more details on the WSI.)

The WATSAT tool enables local-level action by translating the concept of water security into a structured, accessible format. It empowers city-level planners and decision-makers to identify water system strengths and vulnerabilities using a standardized methodology. The tool contributes directly to improved governance, better-informed urban planning, and stronger climate adaptation strategies.

Outcomes and results

• Capacity-building and training: An in-person training workshop was delivered to 23 participants, including 13 practitioners from government water agencies and utilities and 10 early-career professionals from 6 countries.
• Application of WATSAT for urban water security assessment: Capacity to apply WATSAT was developed among all trained participants, enabling an independent assessment of city-level water security and recognition of WATSAT to support decisions on urban water management.

Project details

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN). Acknowledgements are extended for the foundational work done under APN project CBA2020-07SY-Babel, which laid the groundwork for the development of the WATSAT tool.

Related information

• Project Permalink
• WATSAT tool website
• Related case study: WATSAT – A Practical Tool for Assessing Urban Water Security (CBA2020-07SY-Babel)
• APN parent project page (CBA2020-07SY-Babel)
• Babel, M. S., Shinde, V. R., Sharma, D., & Dang, N. M. (2020). Measuring water security: A vital step for climate change adaptation. Environmental Research, 185, 109400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.109400
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