Strategic planning and appropriate development and management of water and sanitation services
can be strongly supported by accurate and accessible data. If adequately exploited, these data
might assist water managers with performance monitoring, benchmarking comparisons, policy
progress evaluation, resources allocation, and decision making. A variety of tools and techniques
are in place to collect such information. However, some methodological weaknesses arise when
developing an instrument for routine data collection, particularly at local level: (i) comparability
problems due to heterogeneity of
data and sector-re
lated indicators, (ii) in
adequate combination of
different information sources, and (iii) statistical validity of collected data.
The purpose of this study is to adopt an integrated water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)
approach for data collection at community level in rural low income settings, as an attempt to
overcome previous shortcomings. The survey design takes the Water Point Mapping (WPM) as a
starting point to record all available water sources at a particular location, and this information is
then linked to data provided from a household-based survey. In order to demonstrate the
applicability of the method, a case study is presented at Tiraque Valley (Cochabamba, Bolivia).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
