Sanitation indicators: analysis of variables to construct municipality indicators

Abstract After nine years of the Sanitation Law that defines the national guidelines in this area, it is still necessary to clarify the elements characterizing basic sanitation, and seek tools that enable monitoring sanitation in municipalities. Increasing international initiatives employ composite indicators to measure the performance of cities, compare them and use them to influence national and international political discussions. In this direction, the objective of this study is to analyze variables for the elaboration of sanitation indicators for the municipalities of São Paulo in order to generate information for the public administration. The method is based on thematic content analysis to understand the sanitation’s components and attributes, and factorial exploratory analysis to elaborate indicators. The results show three indicators that compose a municipal index and indicate the need for data to fully evaluate sanitation.