The SWRR Concepts Work Group developed a set of concepts as a basis for the Rountable’s ongoing efforts to identify criteria and indicators that would be useful in the assessment of the sustainability of water resources in the U.S. The concepts are described in a paper published in Water Resources Update*.

The conceptual framework consists of 2 components: Systems Concepts, which represent “how the world works”; and Information Concepts, which organize, communicate and apply information. We focus on the overall relationship among three major systems: natural, social and economic, encompassed by the concept of sustainability. We bring in the concept of capital as an organizing principle, in identifying criteria and indicators by recognizing that sustainability can be achieved by maintaining the capacity of capital in all forms to meet human and non-human needs within the biosphere. All three systems - natural, social and economic - produce flows of services, experiences or goods that meet various needs over time.

In discussing how to select criteria and indicators, we consider various roles and uses of information. The scope and nature of the criteria and indicators to be selected depends on the roles and uses we want them to serve. Information plays a pivotal role as feedback in a cyclical process of decisions, actions, observation of consequences, and back to decisions, etc. We can show the relationships among forms of information from stories, to criteria, to indicators and down to measurements as a pyramid where we move from the more general to the more specific. At the top is the most widely communicated form of information, relatively simple stories that are told in various media. Such stories can be developed by interpreting detailed criteria and indicators produced using data from measurements.

We bring the systems and information concepts together to show how indicators could be selected for each criterion using systems models to identify and represent the important components and processes for each category of capital. The framework developed from the systems and information concepts can be applied as appropriate to operational models that describe ecological, social, and economic processes.

* Kranz, R., S. Gasteyer, H.R. Heintz Jr, R. Shafer, and A. Steinman. 2004. Conceptual Foundations for the Sustainable Water Resources Roundtable. Water Resources Update. 127:11-19.