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INTRODUCTION
Population growth, urbanization, economic development, and lifestyle changes in the urban sectors have pressed the demand for water high in terms of both quantity and quality (Domene & Sauri 2006). Climate change and environmental pollution put additional pressure by affecting the accessibility of water resources to meet the growing demand (Danilenko et al. 2010). Thus, available water sources in any part of the world are becoming depleted and/or degraded (He et al. 2021). Water shortage, poor drinking water quality, and frequent interruption of supply in urban areas of developing countries are especially common (Kumpel & Nelson 2016; Salehi 2022). The main reasons for these are a lack of resources, low GDP, polluting industries, an insufficient response from institutions, and unsatisfactory planning and management (Talat 2021). Generally, scarcity of traditional water sources, along with poor service delivery, is increasingly threatening the security of water needs in urban centers of developing countries.
Thus, proper management of the available source, the introduction of alternative sources and surveillance of water quality, and then upgrading the performance level of the water supply system are needed. Performance assessment is a tool that can help decision- and policy-makers adopt what actions they should and should not take in an attempt to make an optimal contribution to sustainable development (Waas et al. 2014). The aims of sustainable development in the urban water sector are to have access to safe, adequate, and clean water to satisfy potable and non-potable needs of consumers at all times, to achieve a reasonable and lasting balance between water supply and demand, to reduce adverse impacts caused by the system to prevent permanent environmental damage, to optimize the allocation of financial resources to make water services profitable and strengthen household affordability (Motevallian et al. 2011).
A sustainability index (SI) is used to indicate the performance of a water supply system concerning predetermined thresholds of a satisfactory state. Thus, sustainability criteria and their indicators are used to quantify the different aspects of utility services and to assess the trend of sustainable development. Generally, performance indicators of urban water supply systems can be grouped as water resources, physical, operational, quality of service, and economic performances. Water resource availability is the main water resource performance indicator. The capacity of storage, quality...