Purpose

In January 2005, the Japan Water Works Association (JWWA) published "The Guidelines for the Management and Assessment of Drinking Water Services". Soon afterwards, JWWA issued the Commentary on the Guidelines for more detailed account.
Thanks to the Guidelines, water utilities are now able to assess their operational levels in numerical values and conduct an objective analysis using a wide range of performance indicators (PIs) for potential improvement of their service and system management. For this reason, the Guidelines would need to be widely read and used by more water utilities.

Since 2005, the Japan Water Research Center has created histograms of Japanese water utilities for these PIs, hoping they will help utilities with their self-analysis and objective-settings.