Investigating temporal dynamics of urban densification on the buried water infrastructure performance

Abstract

Urban densification has dominated the land uses and land covers which may jeopardize the quality of life and sustainable development. Moreover, urban densification process exerts stress on buried water infrastructure (BWI) performance. In this study, the need of predicting the change in urban densification and its subsequent impacts on BWI performance over time has drawn attention to conduct a temporal analysis. A hybrid approach was used to select the significant control performance indicators (CPIs) and conduct a temporal analysis. Eight scenarios were generated using the Canadian Council of the Ministers of the Environment Water Quality Index approach to address the change in drinking water quality. The proposed approach was implemented in a municipality of British Columbia, Canada, as a case study. The results showed a 40 % decrease in the BWI performance due to the urban areas have rapidly grown both in population and built-up areas over three decades. Furthermore, an ideal situation was assumed to show that the targeted service level (i.e., 0.5) can be achieved with 3 % to 5 % improvement in every five years of service level. These findings will assist the decision makers to understand the linkage between CPIs to maintain and achieve the required BWI performance.