The use of indicators in urban drinking water and sewage systems is vital to be able to determine how efficiently the services are being managed and the resources used. The development of performance assessment tools is also fundamental for local administrations to regulate these services. In all these cases the difficulty lies in establishing a balanced system of indicators, representing reality as accurately as possible and enabling a fair comparison while being able to identify the factors explaining differences in performance.

The first work on performance indicators at the ITA dates back to 1997. Since then numerous papers have been published on the subject, and the Institute has taken an active part in international projects and publications on this matter (taskforces on performance indicators and benchmarking off the IWA, ISO 24500 standards, COST C18 action with EU financing, etc).