A benchmarking–scoring methodology for assessing the water risk disclosures of water utilities

The increasing interest in water protection creates a new complex business environment. On account of firms’ large-scale impacts on the environment and water resources as well as the important role of specific industry sectors, such as water utilities, in water protection, various groups of stakeholders have lately requested for firms to provide transparent and extensive information about their water management strategies implemented to deal with water risks and opportunities. In this regard, sustainability reports play a critical role in informing stakeholders about their water risk performance and management practices. Despite the popularity of sustainability reports as a communication tool for environmental and water-related information, there is not a widely applied technique for evaluating and reporting water risk information. To advance the water risk reporting practices, this paper develops an evaluation framework which could assist firms, especially water utilities, in disclosing accurate and detailed information and data about water risks. The proposed methodological framework was applied in a sample of water utilities in order to examine its applicability, highlighting the strong and weak points.