Water Sustainability Index: Application of CWSI for Ahwaz County

Sustainability of water resources is vital especially for developing countries such as Iran which are located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region where water is scarce. To balance the high demand of water for economical growth and at the same time preserve the environment for present and future generations, sustainability of water resources should be considered by monitoring and data mining. For this purpose, several quantified indices have been proposed and applied world wide recently. In this paper, the Canadian Water Sustainability Index (CWSI) proposed by PRI, has been trailed for the case of Ahwaz County, a community located in South West of Iran fed by Karun River. Required data for the composite CWSI score which is the average of five major theme-based components (i.e. resource, ecosystem health, infrastructure, human health capacity) was collected according to the PRI evaluation method. In addition to the standardized CWSI, the final index was also calculated considering weight estimation for the five components by pair-wise comparison, using Expert Choice version 2000. Results showed that application of this index as a policy tool, with some modifications in weights, was satisfactory for the educational case study and could be replicated for other communities in Iran.