Global Journal of Human Social Science, H: Interdisciplinary, Volume 23 Issue 5

© 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue V Version I Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( ) H 13 observe that the exponential growth of occupation in urban centers has been accompanied by wasteful practices, misuse, and irregular disposal of large amounts of polluting materials that will contaminate groundwater and watercourses. These adverse and stressful conditions make it even more difficult for the entire population to access drinking water and basic sanitation, with serious consequences for health, the economy, and the environment. Almeida and Brito (2002) state that hydric resources are a fundamental element for the balanced development of human activities in any region but that their management is of great complexity. Good management of hydric resources demands analysis, planning, and actions from an integrated perspective. To this, it needs that incorporates short, medium, and long-term time horizons, considering solutions for present problems or those that may occur in the future. Porto and Porto (2008) emphasize that water resources sustainable management requires the use of a minimum set of instruments that provide the essential data and information base on the life cycle of water, knowledge of use rights and distribution mechanisms, control of anthropic and environmental impacts on water resources, and the decision-making process. Magalhães and Barp (2014) note that water management in the context of river basins is based mainly on the ability of public and private organizations to carry out planning activities, outline strategies, and make decisions to supply previously determined users who depend on water and share the same source of resources and territory. Since several sectors share the resources of watersheds, they need to be under a complex regime of use and regulation, which is necessarily dynamic. For managers to handle water resources efficiently and effectively, it is essential to have information, metrics, and indicators to support all stages of the decision-making process (MIZUTANI & CONTI, 2021). Indicators are important, for example, to measure scale, corrosion, odors, and contaminant removal. In this way, Tang et al. (2021) advises that the indicators be quantified considering local conditions and the source of water that will be used to obtain a better result. b) Indicators for water resources management An indicator is characterized by information collected about a given reality, such as indexes, variables, and standardized reference values that make situations measurable. The author Dias (2018) explains that indicators are tools for obtaining information with the main objective of synthesizing them in a simple, logical, and clear way to be informative and facilitate the manager's understanding. According to Mizutani and Conti (2021), using indicators enables data transformation into measurable information to make them accessible. The way to measure, therefore, allows the redefinition by the concept of tangibility, which assists in determining policies and the performance evaluation process. Chaves et al. (2020) point out that indicators can be classified into three distinct categories: • Descriptive indicators, which use direct data without a previous specification of use. • Performance indicators, which generate more information to demonstrate progress or seek to achieve a certain goal. • Composite indicators, which generate complete and detailed information on performance evaluation and propose to convey information more broadly, covering different audiences. Tang et al. (2021) state that in addition to the various ways of using the indicator system, there are many other measures that, when used to support the management of water resources, help guide actions and decision-making. The study of Hafeez et al. (2019), for example, shows the importance of indicators to measure and manage water quality, which are defined using remote sensing and machine learning technologies. Neto et al. (2009) state that the importance of environmental indicators lies in the possibility of using them to measure the evolution of an ecological system, as they are representative parameters and simple to interpret, used to demonstrate the characteristics of a given region. As suggested by Libânio et al. (2005), in many situations, sanitation indicators correlate with others that demonstrate the living conditions of populations, such as social development indicators, mortality, and morbidity rates due to parasitic diseases and waterborne infectious diseases. Sugahara et al. (2021, p. 303), in turn, add that "when developing and applying sustainability indicators, these should consider the particularities of a region; otherwise, they will be subject to ineffectiveness or compromising the decision-making process." Dias (2018) complements this by stating that, concerning water resources management, the indicators used are specific to cover all the conditions considered in the water supply process, consumption, and treatment. Chaves et al. (2020) present indicators that are useful in the management of water resources, such as the geometric rate of annual growth, erosion, sliding and silting, water demand, ecological contamination, effluents from industries and sanitation, social responsibility and human development, population, waterborne diseases environmental damage, water quality (surface and underground), water availability, flood and drought, waste collection and disposal, effluent collection and treatment, improvement of the treatment system, protected areas, water use permits, environmental contamination control, infrastructure, and sanitation. Unlocking the Potential of Smart Watersheds: Leveraging Iot and Big Data for Sustainable Water Resource Management and Indicator Calculation