The ultimate goal of any water intervention is to ensure access to sufficient safe water to save and sustain lives. This means that operational monitoring throughout the course of the intervention is extremely important to gauge whether the interventions are having the planned impact and the performance targets are being met. For coordination purposes, monitoring is also important to ensure all stakeholders are contributing to achieving the target indicators to a high degree and are working with the same standards in the same operational space. Routine monitoring should continue after the acute phase, regardless of the context, at least until durable solutions are established. Cost is also an important indicator to track the efficiency of the programme and ensure that water supply systems can be sustained by those who are handed long-term control. Additionally, inclusion, protection and accountability indicators should not be neglected (see X.4). As an example, UNHCR water indicators for the acute emergency and the post-emergency (stabilisation and recovery) phases for a refugee camp setting are presented in Table 2.

To ensure a seamless transition from the emergency phase to long-term development, monitoring should be managed by the coordinating body led by the local authorities with the support of other humanitarian and developmental actors. The support could come from an existing WASH sector or cluster that will advise on indicators and targets as part of the coordination mechanism (see X.3).