The International Recommendations for Water Statistics (IRWS) is a statistical intermediate output framework developed by the

United Nations Statistics Division The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), formerly the United Nations Statistical Office, serves under the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) as the central mechanism within the Secretariat of the United Nations ...

(UNSD) and approved by the

United Nations Statistical Commission The United Nations Statistical Commission (StatCom) is a Functional Commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, established in 1947. The Statistical Commission oversees the work of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). I ...

(UNSC) that was designed for guiding countries in the development of their

water Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...

information system An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...

s to design and evaluate policies for better

water management Water resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans, for example as a source of drinking water supply or irrigation water. 97% of the water on the Earth is salt water and only three percent is fresh water; slight ...

. The IRWS are aligned with the United Nations Water Accounts (SEEA-Water), a statistical output framework. The IRWS consolidates the experiences and practices of countries and international organisations in the field of water statistics, and were developed in collaboration and consultations with many country and international experts. The IRWS is divided into two main parts followed by annexes. The first part contains the international recommendations with the main concepts, definitions, classifications of statistical units and data items. The second part provides guidance for implementation, covering data sources,

data quality Data quality refers to the state of qualitative or quantitative pieces of information. There are many definitions of data quality, but data is generally considered high quality if it is "fit for tsintended uses in operations, decision making a ...

, data collection strategies and dissemination. The annexes provide reference information as well as indicators.

References

{{UN-stub United Nations Economic and Social Council