Water

Model Terms of Reference
Diagnostic City Water Assessments

ADB project officers now have a powerful tool for revealing the facts about water consumers and water and money flows in project cities and towns.

ADB has produced a model Terms of Reference (TOR) for investigating and responding to both the "formal" and "informal" segments of a city's water market.

• Why conduct a diagnostic city water assessment
• What the model TOR offers
• Links

City water supply projects mostly concentrate on the city water utility. But, in developing countries, many urban residents obtain water from an "informal" market. There might actually be more money turning over in informal markets than through the water utility.

And formal and informal markets are linked. The informal water vendors, tanker operators, water re-sellers, small piped network operators, and bottlers might be buying or stealing their water from the utility—and some water utility staff and officials might even be complicitly aware of this, which might explain intractable high unaccounted for water (UFW) in some utilities.

So it could be risky investing in the water utility without also understanding the informal water market. An incisive audit of water and money flows might reveal a governance and leadership problem that needs to be fixed before committing to the project.

Even more important, the project might completely miss those who need support most— the underserved and disadvantaged poor.

Top

The TOR for undertaking investigative city water assessments provides an approach and methodology for

• surveying all classes of water consumers and all types of water providers
• analyzing the survey results
• undertaking stakeholder consultations based on the survey findings
• formulating responsive city government policy and ordinances
• organizing civil society (consumer groups) to monitor policy implementation

The TOR even contains the survey forms.

With this knowledge and an improved policy setting underway, a successful project can be prepared with influential and well-meaning city and utility leaders.

Top

To read, you need Acrobat.

• Outline of TOR [PDF]
• Detailed TOR [PDF]
• Appendices [PDF]



1. Questionnaire for Water Utility (International Consultant)
2. Questionnaire for Small Private Piped Water Operators (Domestic Consultants)
3. Questionnaire for Water Vendors (Students)
4. Questionnaire for Bottled Water Supplier (Students)
5. Questionnaire for Consumer Survey (Students)
6. Optional Questionnaire on Sanitation for Utility/Local Govt.
7. Optional Questionnaire on Sanitation for Consumers
8. Example of Analysis of Water Assessment Results
9. Example of Analysis of People Assessment Results
10. Example of Analysis of Money Assessment Results
11. Water Production and NRW (Breakdown)