ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 25 science in terms of utilizing, adopting and integrating advanced information technology (IT) remains in the developmental stage. Water pollution, water wastage, supply and transportation of portable water and the cost associated with the overall water management are some of the issues that challenge the water sector41. Lack of awareness of the problem, inadequate information, and difficulties in the ability to demonstrate investment returns are driving governments across the globe to integrate advanced IT techniques and infrastructure to improve the management of water resources42. Smart water management systems use and apply ICT in the development and delivery of solutions to provide access to safe water, manage demand and supply, and develop a pricing mechanism. Examples include: Providing continuous monitoring of water quality and availability via smart sensors Improving water and energy efficiency Enabling better overall water management This acts as an important factor to connect the problems of consumers with the potential answers of the service providers. Recognizing that the availability of water has become critical, the Focus Group on Smart Water Management43 (FG‐SWM) was established by the ITU‐T TSAG meeting in Geneva, 4‐7 June 2013, with ITU‐T Study Group 5 as its parent group. The FG‐SWM had its first meeting in Lima, Peru, in December 2013. With urbanization, the problem for sustainable water (environmentally and financially) and sanitation services is becoming a major challenge for cities. ITU aims to acknowledge the water management problems faced by cities and position the implementation of smart water management (SWM), using ICT as an enabler to address, manage and provide potential solutions to alleviate challenges. The integration of such technologies is adapted to monitor water resources and to understand problems in the urban water sector. All aspects in a city's water system are managed by prioritizing and managing maintenance issues as well as data. In order to realize these opportunities in cities, the FG‐SWM is developing a technical report that emphasizes the need for careful design and proper coordination among all relevant sectors on SWM technologies such as: Smart pipes and sensor networks Smart metering Communication modems Geographic information systems (GIS) Cloud computing Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) Models, optimization, and decision‐support tools Web‐based communication and information system tools ____________________ 41 http://water.org/water‐crisis/water‐facts/water/ 42 http://www.globalissues.org/article/601/water‐and‐development 43 http://www.itu.int/en/ITU‐T/focusgroups/swm/Pages/default.aspx