Water accounting in municipalities: Water use and efficiency analysis in basins supplying water to İstanbul

The Australian General Purpose Water Accounting System is the system in which the important standards, recording, and reporting structures of financial accounting are advocated, applied, and presented based on the premise that "we cannot plan and manage what we cannot measure". In this study, an analysis has been made to understand the water allocation, water flows, and water movements for the basins that supply water to Istanbul according to basin use. General-purpose water reports have been prepared for Istanbul's basins. These reports provide a common tool to support policies to improve accountability and water management. The reports were prepared by the Australian Water Accounting Standards; Water Accounting Conceptual Framework for the Preparation and Presentation of General-Purpose Water Accounting Reports, Australian Water Accounting Standard 1 (AWAS 1), Australian Water Accounting Standard 2 (AWAS 2). Document analysis, one of the qualitative research techniques, was used in the study. The water accounts in the General-Purpose Water Accounting Reports prepared for the basins supplying water to Istanbul are presented simplified because they do not correspond to the water management in Türkiye and do not cover some temporal and spatial data of water flows. The reports are designed within the framework of Türkiye's water management policies and legislation.