SANTI, Aline Doria. Benchmarking for water loss control in the context of Piracicaba, Capivari and Jundiaí watersheds. Dissertation submitted to the School of Engineering of São Carlos, University of Sao Paulo, to obtain the title of Master of Post-Graduation Program in Environmental Engineering Sciences. 170 p. 2018. The water loss in supply system have presented as one of the biggest challenges of water companies around the world. In the last 12 years the water loss levels in Brazilian's distribution systems have remained close to 40%, level higher than other areas in the globe. Face of the water crisis and increasing water demand, the actions to control the water loss require attention. In the national context, the Piracicaba, Capivari and Jundiai river basins have focus by the Committees efforts that have been acting along with the cities to control the water loss levels in the area. The critical situation of water availability in the river basins, the reduction potential on hydric resources and the financial gain, if the water loss levels have lowered, enhance the urgency to adopt efficient control practices of water loss. Accordingly, the present research has searched to identify, in the context of PCJ river basins water companies, which water loss control practices are associated with the higher performance, measuring the city's water loss levels and exploiting which control practices have applied by the water companies. The first methodological step was the application of the benchmarking technique to measure the performance in water loss control, including indicator choice, questionnaire formulation of operational data, online data collection, data reliability analysis and determination of cities water loss levels, with ranking of this. The second step had directed to the gathering and analysis of control practices adopted by the companies in the area, by applying the practices questionnaire, elaborated as of bibliographic review, in loco. In the third step, using statistic tools, the control practices had crossed with the performance in water loss control, higher and lower, identifying which practices have associated with the companies' performance. The final sample analyzed included 41 cities, of the 70 PCJ Committees members, that data had fit in the reliability levels established for performance comparison purposes. The benchmarking application had enabled to analyze the companies' performance comparing the water loss levels and identifying which cities need urgent attention in control practices. Testes of means comparison had emphasized that there are significant differences in the water loss levels when deemed the city size, company's legal nature and presence of slumbs. The control practices analysis had indicated the company's efforts to control the water loss, focusing in network exchange, district meters' areas, macromediation system, been checked significant differences in the water loss average index when a practice is adopting or not. The association and correspondence analysis had indicated...