Financial sustainability rating tool for urban water systems

Abstract

Solid financial position of water and wastewater utilities builds the basis for their sustainable services in the future, because it allows adequate investments into infrastructure renewal, technical innovations and ecological measures. The Financial Sustainability Rating Tool (FSRT) offers water supply and/or wastewater removal companies an opportunity to rate the utility's financial sustainability. It gives the user an indication, which area from financial situation over asset management to business operation needs optimization. The Tool also evaluates different forecasts (e.g. population development) and country specific characteristics (e.g. inflation rate) to assess future trends. Barometers with green to red indicators for each area as well as overall scores visualize the results of the web based rating. The Tool aims not to denounce a utility against others or to test its creditworthiness, but to encourage utilities to identify critical areas with respect to a solid financial position and to be open-minded for improvement actions. Accordingly, it has set itself the goal to uncover economic deficits and/or best practises to show the user where potentials for development are and which financial strategies are already viable for the future. To achieve meaningful results the Tool is directed at utilities, which provide either only one of the two services or are able to split up the information and costs related to each service.