Indicator-based rural water service sustainability assessment: a review

The aim of this paper is to present the state of the art on the sustainability indices of rural water services in order to identify gaps in knowledge. The methodological approach used was to conduct online searches using the databases of Google Scholar, Web of Science, Pub Med, the International Water Association, and ResearchGate. Several indices have been identified in the literature including the Canadian Water Sustainability Index, Index of Drinking Water Adequacy, the Sustainable Water Governance Index, equity index in water and sanitation, WASH performance Index, Sustainable Water Management Index, and Index of water service quality. However, these indices do not provide an integrative, contextualized and prospective analysis of the sustainability of water services. In addition, these indices select only a few evaluation criteria deemed relevant. In other words, these indices choose to make visible certain phenomena and therefore make others invisible, according to the logic of action of each and to certain social compromises. These difficulties therefore encourage the development of a new index to provide an integrative, contextualized and prospective analysis of the sustainability of rural water services.