This deliverable introduces the guiding protocol for Work Package (WP) 3 of the digital-water.city project. It serves as an overarching framework to link the methodologies and results of the different WPs and to allow for comparability between different case studies conducted within WP3. To facilitate research on digital water governance systems in urban areas, the guiding protocol introduces a ‘Governance Assessment Framework’. This framework helps identify non-technical factors that enable or hinder the uptake of information and communications technology (ICT) solutions to sustainability issues in the water sector. We thank Gabrielle Bouleau, Nicolas Caradot, and Lorenzo Felicetti for comments that greatly improved the manuscript.

Version (v0.1.0) submitted to EC.