IWA is pleased to announce that the IWA Specialist Groups on Statistics & Economics has recently launched new and updated tools that every water professional should know about. These useful tools provide statistics on the water industry, such as tables and figures on abstraction, consumption, tariffs, and data on sewerage and wastewater treatment. This information provides a starting point for debate on how services can be or should be financed, on the importance of water tariff structures, and on topics such as consumption patterns, taxes, leakage, and more. Generally, this information can help organisations set up strategies from a holistic management perspective. You can find out more about IWA Water Statistics here.

About International Statistics for Water Services

The new tools hosted on the platform contain the latest data from the report on international statistics for water services. The report is now in its fourteenth edition, and this update contains data from 39 countries and more than 170 cities worldwide. This report enables high-level comparisons concerning abstraction, consumption, tariff structure and regulation of water services globally. In every statistic type, you can choose a selection of preferred cities and/or countries and sort them using a specific parameter. By clicking on the bar, you can read the detailed value and there is a zoom function in case of small volumes. All the available background information is included to interpret the data in the right way. There are also easy share and download functionalities.

The Copenhagen Edition

The Copenhagen edition of the ‘International Statistics for Water Services’ was initially planned for release at the IWA Water World Congress 2020, but due to the Covid-19 crisis the Congress has been postponed to September 2022. Nevertheless, it is our main goal to update and launch these Statistics every two years, therefore we have opted for a virtual launch in December 2021. This initiative is led by the IWA Specialist Group on Statistics and Economics (chaired by Ed Smeets, The Netherlands) and coordinated by the Working Group on Statistics (chaired by Jan Hammenecker, commercial director) and Ann Bijnens, project coordinator of these statistics (De Watergroep, Belgium).

IWA Specialist Group Statistics and Economics

The International Water Association (IWA) is a worldwide network of professionals, which aims to exchange scientific and professional knowledge, provided by academics and water managers, covering many aspects of the water cycle. The Statistics and Economics Specialist Group is one of the most prolific and active within the IWA network. This edition of the water statistics report has been produced thanks to the work of Ed Smeets (IWA Fellow and Chair of IWA’s Specialist Group on Statistics and Economics), Jan Hammenecker (Leader of the Working Group Statistics and commercial director of De Watergroep, Belgium) and Ann Bijnens, member of the SG Statistics and Economics and statistics expert from De Watergroep, Belgium.

“Especially in these times of COVID-19, we understand that collecting data can be more complicated. We would like to thank all water professionals who helped obtain the data for this survey. Thanks to their efforts, we are able to give a valuable overview of important aspects of water services worldwide. If your country is not listed in the Copenhagen report, and if you want to volunteer to provide us with the valuable data of your country, please let us know and send your contact details to IWA@dewatergroep.be” – Ann Bijnens, IWA Member & Statistics Expert at De Watergroep