| Summary: | The critical situation in the water sector continues to jeopardize developmental principles and undermine strategies for poverty eradication. On the assumption that the failure in service provision can be largely attributed to an inability to holistically address all aspects of urban water management, a systems approach was used to develop a relevant and robust sustainability index which assesses the capacity of a city or a portion thereof to be sustainable. This thesis details the process of developing the Sustainability Index (SI) for a multidimensional assessment of urban water systems. In this research, an analysis of the current problems facing developing cities, particularly in Sub-Saharan countries, was undertaken. This was done so as to provide some insight into the current developmental issues hindering sustainable development. An examination of the urban water cycle was also carried out to illustrate the links within the cycle and between the various water uses and services. A process model was developed which addresses the multi-dimensionality of sustainability and the dynamism of urban water systems. This model combines aspects of the iterative procedure for assessing environmental sustainability introduced by Lundin et al. (2002) with the step-wise process proposed by Nardo et al. (2005).
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