Abstract

Water resources are essential for the economic development and sustenance of human activities belonging to the civil, agricultural and industrial sectors. Increasing water stress conditions, mainly due to climate change and population growth, imply the need to improve the resilience of water supply systems and account for sustainability of water withdrawals. Metabolic modelling approaches represent a flexible tool able to provide a support to decision making in the medium-long term, based on sustainability criteria. Here, these concepts are adopted to analyse part of the water supply network in the Province of Reggio-Emilia (Italy). Different water withdrawals scenarios are considered to account for a potential decrease in water resources availability from a quantitative perspective. As a second step, these scenarios are compared by means of a set of key performance metrics able to identify the most sustainable long-term strategy for a dynamic management of the water supply system. Results of these analysis allow to increase the resilience of the network under future scenarios, while protecting the water resources.

Highlights

  • Increasing urban water demand and the availability of water resources not uniformly distributed in space and time, represent major concerns for water companies [1]

  • A 30‐years time horizon has been simulated with WaterMet2 with a daily time step to compare the business as usual scenario (BAU) and two alternative scenarios by means of proper key performance indicators (KPI)

  • In order to provide some examples for the selected case study, Figure 5a shows the delivered water demand from the Roncocesi well field, under the three possible configurations, confirming the expected reduction in water withdrawals from the Enza fan resulting from the insertion of the new well field

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Summary

Introduction

Increasing urban water demand and the availability of water resources not uniformly distributed in space and time, represent major concerns for water companies [1]. Metabolic modelling approaches represent flexible tools able to support decision making in the long‐term, based on sustainability criteria [7]. These models mimic the water supply network through a set of material and energy fluxes that interact and influence each other. By analysing these fluxes, a suite of key performance indicators (KPI) is evaluated in order to identify interventions that may be applied to increase the sustainability of the system. This approach aims to meet the need for a holistic and sustainable management approach

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