Developing domestic water security index in urban cities, Bahir Dar City, Ethiopia

Abstract

Water security is one of the global indicators in sustainable development goals, which becomes the cross-cutting issue worldwide. Studies have been performed at global, national, and city levels to assess the water security issues. Since assessment of water security at domestic scale has not been done yet in developing countries like Ethiopia, it is essential to develop an appropriate framework for the assessment of domestic water security at the city scale and apply it for urban cities of Ethiopia. The study therefore aimed at developing the domestic water security assessment framework and apply the framework to assess domestic water security index for cities in Ethiopia. The developed framework comprises of three dimensions: water supply, sanitation and hygiene; eleven indicators and fifteen variables. These indicators were defined using driver, pressure, state, impact and response (DPSIR) approach. The variables of the indicators were defined by specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound (SMART) criteria and were used to identify and select the composite of the appropriate indicators and variables. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and equal weighting methods were used to compute an index by giving different and equal weighting factors for variables, indicators and dimensions respectively. The developed framework was applied for Bahir Dar city to quantify its domestic water security index for the year 2017/18. Generally, Bahir Dar city is found under medium (2.8) domestic water security status with high (3.41), medium (2.29) and very low (1.0) indices of water supply, sanitation and hygiene dimensions respectively.