Abstract
The impact of climate change, water scarcity, land use change, population growth and also population shrinking can only be predicted with uncertainties. Especially for assets with a long planning horizon this is a critical part for planning and design. One solution is to make centralized organized water infrastructure with a long-planning horizon resilient and adaptive. For existing centralized infrastructure such a transition would be to increasingly implement decentralized measures. But such a transition can cause severe impacts on existing centralized infrastructure. Low flow conditions in urban drainage systems can cause sediment deposition, and for water supply systems water age problems may occur. This work focuses on city-scale analysis for assessing the impact of such measures. For that a coupled model for integrated city-scale analysis is applied and further developed. In addition, a geographic information system (GIS)-based approach for sensitivity analysis is enhanced and also implemented in that model. The developed approach is applied to assess the water infrastructure of an alpine case study. With the obtained results it is demonstrated how the planning process is enhanced by indicating where and where not to implement decentralized measures in an existing water infrastructure.
Highlights
In developed countries, water infrastructure is historically organized centrally with water and sewer pipe networks
For visualization and communication of the results, a geographic information system (GIS)-based approach of sensitivity analysis (SA) is enhanced and implemented in the integrated city-scale analysis approach. These kinds of sensitivity maps can be used for estimating the impact of transitions of centralized water infrastructure to decentralized solutions and to assess the impact of population decrease or water demand reductions
With the GIS-based SA, the results can be communicated to stakeholders and decision makers
Summary
Water infrastructure is historically organized centrally with water and sewer pipe networks. Waste water and storm water are more and more regarded as a valuable resource (e.g. Barton & Argue ); these water streams are increasingly reused (e.g. Domènech & Saurí ; Makropoulos & Butler ). Regarding sustainability, another goal is to preserve the natural water cycle in urbanized areas. Integrated urban water management aims to include watersensitive urban design (e.g. Brown et al ) to enhance a holistic approach (Hunt et al ). Such measure (i.e. decentralized measures) can have severe impacts on the existing centralized water infrastructure
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