Transitioning towards Resilient Urban Water Systems through Traditional Engineering and Nature-based Strategies (ReUWS)
Abstract
Water resource infrastructure developed over past centuries has been an arguable success in providing sufficient quantity and quality of freshwater, sanitary treatment and disposal, and stormwater flood protection for billions of people. Design and maintenance challenges for these complex systems today include regulatory, technical, financial and hydroclimatic change, rising populations in need of service, and built environment expansion, both planned and unplanned. Recently documented stresses on existing grey infrastructure include the lack of financial and institutional resources for the high capitalization needed to implement and operate any new infrastructure, a challenge across the developed and developing world alike. This infrastructure typically extends well outside the urban service area with potential impacts and conflicts arising between both upstream and downstream communities and environments when diversions of upstream freshwater and/or downstream pollution occur. As a result, there is a growing recognition that water resource systems could be made more resilient by adapting coupled green and grey infrastructure (GGI) and affiliated technologies that jointly protecct source waters, treat and recycle wastewater and stormwater, and reduce overall system costs.
This talk summarizes work initiated to explore socio-environmental conditions and path dependent development potentials (and constraints) associated with GGI to achieve resilient, equitable solutions to water management, with a particular emphasis on urban systems and urban-serving watersheds (Resilient Urban Water Systems, ReUWS). There are five conceptual elements: (i) detection, through which advanced GIS/pattern recognition approaches indicate presence or absence of engineered and natural capital; (ii) assessment of GGI state, determined by survey (e.g. ASCE), regulatory mandated performance reports, and scientific assessments; (iii) hydro-connectivity and functional signals of GGI systems, examining historical trends of watershed development, engineering interventions, and resulting hydrographic distortions from source through end use; and, (v) consideration of social systems, policies, financing, and zoning as contributors to resilience.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC34B..02V
- Keywords:
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- 0402 Agricultural systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1804 Catchment;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1834 Human impacts;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1878 Water/energy interactions;
- HYDROLOGY