Comprehensive Evaluation Model for Urban Water Security: A Case Study in Dongguan, China

Water security plays a critical role in the development and stability of a region. Constructing an objective and reasonable evaluation indicator system is beneficial to quantitatively evaluating the regional water security status and improving water resource management. In this paper, an urban water security indicator system was established based on the Driving–Pressure–State–Impact–Response (DPSIR) framework with Dongguan City as a case study. By introducing the projection pursuit (PP) algorithm, a DPSIR–PP model was developed to quantitatively evaluate urban water security. The evaluation results show that Dongguan City’s water security index had an overall upward trend during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, with the evaluation grade rising from IV to III. The indicators with the top five weights are: river water quality condition, ecological index, the leakage rate of water supply network, the value added by industry, and the Dongjiang water resources development and utilization rate. The evaluation results are essentially in line with the reality of Dongguan City. On this basis, the internal links of water security and future trends were further analyzed. Through the evaluation results and policy analysis, it is shown that the water security-related measures implemented during the 13th Five-Year Plan period have been effective. Overall, the methodology proposed in this study is beneficial for gaining an in-depth understanding of urban water security impact factors and provides some theoretical basis and reference for future water resources management.