A Practical Review of Integrated Urban Water Models: Applications as Decision Support Tools and Beyond
Abstract
The integrated urban water management has become a necessity due to the high rate of urbanization, water scarcity, and climate variability. Climate and demographic changes, shifting the social attitude toward the water usage, and insufficiencies in system resilience increase the pressure on the water resources. Alongside with the water management, modeling urban water systems have progressed from traditional view to comprise alternatives such as decentralized water and wastewater systems, fit-for-purpose practice, graywater/rainwater reuse, and green infrastructure. While there are review papers available focusing on the technical part of the models, they seem to be more beneficial for model developers. Some of the models analyze a number of scenarios considering factors such as climate change and demography and their future impacts. However, others only focus on quality and quantity of water in a supply/demand approach. For example, optimizing the size of water or waste water store, characterizing the supply and quantity of urban stormwater and waste water, and link source of water to demand. A detailed and practical comparison of such models has become a necessity for the practitioner and policy makers. This research compares more than 7 most commonly used integrated urban water cycle models and critically reviews their capabilities, input requirements, output and their applications. The output of such detailed comparison will help the policy makers for the decision process in the built environment to compare and choose the best models that meet their goals. The results of this research show that we need a transition from developing/using integrated water cycle models to integrated system models which incorporate urban water infrastructures and ecological and economic factors. Such models can help decision makers to reflect other important criteria but with the focus on urban water management. The research also showed that there is a need in exploring sustainability, comprising water energy-nexus, and considering ecosystem services in the models. In addition, socio-economic factors such as public acceptance can be added to such models. Finally, the reliability and resilience of urban water management scenarios should be addressed under different uncertainties such as climate variability.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.H14C..01M
- Keywords:
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- 0493 Urban systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0495 Water/energy interactions;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1871 Surface water quality;
- HYDROLOGY