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Synergies in Urban Water Infrastructure Modeling

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A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2017) | Viewed by 49747

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Manfred Kleidorfer

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Guest Editor

Unit of Environmental Engineering, University of Innsbruck, Innrain 52, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Interests: urban drainage systems; stormwater management; nature based solutions; climate change adaptation; modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Robert Sitzenfrei

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Guest Editor

Unit of Environmental Engineering, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Interests: resilience; modelling of urban water networks; complex network analysis; transition modelling; smart water city; data driven methods
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Models of urban water infrastructure systems are widely used in many scientific and practical engineering applications. They are used to design new or optimize existing systems, or to understand the connection between the natural and human environments. Traditionally, the field is divided into drainage and water supply, not only on a technical, but also at an institutional level.

While this segmentation into water supply and urban drainage might seem to be reasonable at first sight, for many applications these systems are technically linked or at least share the same space in the urban environment, and, as such, are influenced by the same drivers. To improve the integrated view of these two fields, in this Special Issue we would like to especially invite research on integrated studies, in which different systems interact with each other, or in which synergies are used to model both systems. Additionally, manuscripts on the benefits of overarching methods and tools are specifically invited. Examples are common external drivers (as for example urban development, growing or shrinking population, climate change) uptake of new technology which also influences the other system (e.g., water saving measures, reuse scenarios), the contamination of one system through the other (e.g., sulfate, micro pollutants), or shared methods and tools (e.g., for data collection and handling, model building, calibration, uncertainty analysis, system analysis, risk assessment, resilience).

Prof. Dr. Manfred Kleidorfer
Prof. Dr. Robert Sitzenfrei
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

water supply,
drainage,
sanitary engineering,
calibration,
systems analysis,
data management,
integrated modelling,

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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3617 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

LCA Methodology for the Quantification of the Carbon Footprint of the Integrated Urban Water System

by Mariacrocetta Sambito and Gabriele Freni

Water 2017, 9(6), 395; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9060395 - 02 Jun 2017

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 5930

Abstract

In integrated urban water systems, energy consumption, and consequently the amount of produced CO₂, depends on many environmental, infrastructural, and management factors such as supply water quality, on which treatment complexity depends, urban area orography, water systems efficiency, and maintenance levels. An important factor is related to the presence of significant water losses, which result in an increase in the supply volume and therefore a higher energy consumption for treatment and pumping, without effectively supplying users. The current European environmental strategy is committed to sustainable development by generating action plans to improve the environmental performance of products and services. The analysis of carbon footprints is considered one such improvement, allowing for the evaluation of the environmental impact of single production phases. Using this framework, the aim of the study is to apply a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to quantify the carbon footprint of an overall integrated urban water system referring to ISO/TS 14067 (2013). This methodology uses an approach known as “cradle to grave” and presumes to conduct an objective assessment of product units, balancing energy, and matter flows along the production process. The methodology was applied to a real case study, i.e., the integrated urban water system of the Palermo metropolitan area in Sicily (Italy). Each process in the system was characterized and globally evaluated from the point of view of water loss, energy consumption, and CO₂ production, and some mitigation strategies are proposed and evaluated to reduce the energy consumption and, consequently, the environmental impact of the system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Synergies in Urban Water Infrastructure Modeling)

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2903 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Where to Find Water Pipes and Sewers?—On the Correlation of Infrastructure Networks in the Urban Environment

by Michael Mair, Jonatan Zischg, Wolfgang Rauch and Robert Sitzenfrei

Water 2017, 9(2), 146; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9020146 - 21 Feb 2017

Cited by 50 | Viewed by 7541

Abstract

Urban water infrastructure, i.e., water supply and sewer networks, are underground structures, implying that detailed information on their location and features is not directly accessible, frequently erroneous, or missing. For public use, data is also not made available due to security concerns. This lack of quality data, especially for research purposes, requires substantial effort when such data is sought for both statistical and model‐based analyses. An alternative to gathering data from archives and observations is to extract the information from surrogate data sources (e.g., the street network). The key for such an undertaking is to identify the common characteristics of all urban infrastructure network types and to quantify them. In this work, the network correlations of the street, water supply, and sewer networks are systematically analyzed. The results showed a strong correlation between the street networks and urban water infrastructure networks, in general. For the investigated cases, on average, 50% of the street network length correlates with 80%-85% of the total water supply/sewer network. A correlation between street types and water infrastructure properties (e.g., pipe diameter) cannot be found. All analyses are quantified in the form of different geometric‐ and graph‐based indicators. The obtained results improve the understanding of urban network infrastructure from an integrated point of view. Moreover, the method can be fundamental for different research purposes, such as data verification, data completion, or even the entire generation of feasible datasets. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Synergies in Urban Water Infrastructure Modeling)

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6922 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Comparison of Multi-Criteria Decision Support Methods for Integrated Rehabilitation Prioritization

by Franz Tscheikner-Gratl, Patrick Egger, Wolfgang Rauch and Manfred Kleidorfer

Water 2017, 9(2), 68; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9020068 - 24 Jan 2017

Cited by 126 | Viewed by 11827

Abstract

The decisions taken in rehabilitation planning for the urban water networks will have a long lasting impact on the functionality and quality of future services provided by urban infrastructure. These decisions can be assisted by different approaches ranging from linear depreciation for estimating the economic value of the network over using a deterioration model to assess the probability of failure or the technical service life to sophisticated multi-criteria decision support systems. Subsequently, the aim of this paper is to compare five available multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods (ELECTRE, AHP, WSM, TOPSIS, and PROMETHEE) for the application in an integrated rehabilitation management scheme for a real world case study and analyze them with respect to their suitability to be used in integrated asset management of water systems. The results of the different methods are not equal. This occurs because the chosen score scales, weights and the resulting distributions of the scores within the criteria do not have the same impact on all the methods. Independently of the method used, the decision maker must be familiar with its strengths but also weaknesses. Therefore, in some cases, it would be rational to use one of the simplest methods. However, to check for consistency and increase the reliability of the results, the application of several methods is encouraged. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Synergies in Urban Water Infrastructure Modeling)

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1069 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Rainwater Harvesting and Social Networks: Visualising Interactions for Niche Governance, Resilience and Sustainability

by Sarah Ward and David Butler

Water 2016, 8(11), 526; https://doi.org/10.3390/w8110526 - 11 Nov 2016

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 9184

Abstract

Visualising interactions across urban water systems to explore transition and change processes requires the development of methods and models at different scales. This paper contributes a model representing the network interactions of rainwater harvesting (RWH) infrastructure innovators and other organisations in the UK RWH niche to identify how resilience and sustainability feature within niche governance in practice. The RWH network interaction model was constructed using a modified participatory social network analysis (SNA). The SNA was further analysed through the application of a two-part analytical framework based on niche management and the safe, resilient and sustainable (‘Safe and SuRe’) framework. Weak interactions between some RWH infrastructure innovators and other organisations highlighted reliance on a limited number of persuaders to influence the regime and landscape, which were underrepresented. Features from niche creation and management were exhibited by the RWH network interaction model, though some observed characteristics were not represented. Additional Safe and SuRe features were identified covering diverse innovation, responsivity, no protection, unconverged expectations, primary influencers, polycentric or adaptive governance and multiple learning-types. These features enable RWH infrastructure innovators and other organisations to reflect on improving resilience and sustainability, though further research in other sectors would be useful to verify and validate observation of the seven features. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Synergies in Urban Water Infrastructure Modeling)

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Review

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1204 KiB

Open AccessReview

Urban Water Cycle Simulation/Management Models: A Review

by Carlos Andrés Peña-Guzmán, Joaquín Melgarejo, Daniel Prats, Andrés Torres and Sandra Martínez

Water 2017, 9(4), 285; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9040285 - 19 Apr 2017

Cited by 27 | Viewed by 14346

Abstract

Urban water management is increasingly important given the need to maintain water resources that comply with global and local standards of quantity and quality. The effective management of water resources requires the optimization of financial resources without forsaking social requirements. A number of mathematical models have been developed for this task; such models account for all components of the Urban Water Cycle (UWC) and their interactions. The wide range of models entails the need to understand their differences in an effort to identify their applicability, so academic, state, and private sectors can employ them for environmental, economic, and social ends. This article presents a description of the UWC and relevant components, a literature review of different models developed between 1990 and 2015, and an analysis of several case studies (applications). It was found that most applications are focused on new supply sources, mainly rainwater. In brief, this article provides an overview of each model’s use (primarily within academia) and potential use as a decision-making tool. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Synergies in Urban Water Infrastructure Modeling)

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