Investigating and Selecting of Assessment Indexes for Sustainable Water Management at Watershed Scale

In recent years, water resources management has faced many challenges due to poor water governance and management, increasing demand, industrial and agricultural development, and unbalanced water allocations for various uses (Global Water Partnership, 2006). Sustainable development provides solutions for development in order to solve economic, social and environmental problems. The study of the relationship between economic, social and environmental processes in management approaches has been accepted as a sustainable development, but managers and decision makers still have difficulty in applying and evaluating this relationship. In order to evaluate a system, a set of indicators is needed that can be used to examine a system in different aspects, reflecting current or future issues. The World Water Assessment Program (WWAP) (2003) reports on the importance of indicators in streamlining information about integrated water resources management and the establishment of effective communication between different departments in water management. So far, several studies have been conducted in the country on the evaluation of the results of plans for management of water resources and consumptions (Arshadi & Bagheri, 2014; Karamouz & Mohammadpour, 2017). In these studies, most of the researchers have not had a basin view, and have not been consistent with all the components of sustainability, especially the environmental and institutional components. The present study was carried out by reviewing previous studies with some concepts, with the aim of identifying important indicators in water management assessment, assessing the performance of indicators related to water management against a set of sustainability components, and finally extracting and introducing indexes appropriate to dry and semi- dry conditions.