Radionuclear Material Agents that Could be Used in Food and Water Supply Terrorism

Melbourne Water is a Victorian government owned company that provides water supply and sewerage services to Melbourne's retail water companies, and manages rivers and creeks, floodplains and the regional drainage system. The water supply system managed by Melbourne Water is a complex interconnected system of 10 storage reservoirs, over 40 service reservoirs, 160,000 hectares of catchments and hundreds of kilometres of tunnels and pipelines. The complexity of the system and the needs of stakeholders mean the way the system operates has to be based on many considerations. These considerations include: the volumes to be sourced from various sources that have differential costs, the timing of volumes sourced, the distribution of storage within the water supply system, minimising the risk of localised or system wide spills due to increased supply from various sources, minimising the risk of low storage volumes due to inadequate intakes volumes, water security, water quality, scheduled outages of system assets, operating and capital costs, and environmental factors such as healthy water ways and lower greenhouse gas emissions. In planning for the system operation, Melbourne Water prepares an annual operating plan (AOP) that provides a forecast of anticipated system operation for the water supply system. The AOP outlines the system operations for the 12 months ahead, and identifies for each month the volumes of water to be sourced, stored, moved from one location to another, or released to waterways. The preparation of this forecast is a complex task, as the decisions on system operations need to be made under many considerations as outlined earlier. In the past, the preparation of AOP was a manual process undertaken by experienced operators assisted by decision support tools based around the calculation of water balance across the system. However, these tools did not have the capability to identify optimal operations. Instead, the tools were manually updated by experienced operators as documented in system operation guidelines, in consultation with Melbourne's retail water companies. The above approach was time consuming, often requiring up to two weeks to produce an AOP for one operating scenario. In 2009, Melbourne Water developed in-house an optimisation modelling tool, OPTIMISIR, to assist in identifying the optimal annual operating plan. OPTIMISIR provides the flexibility for users to specify various streamflow and demand scenarios, system storage conditions, operating requirements and the aims of the optimisation in the form of an objective function. The choice two optimisation methods; Linear Programming or Quadratic Programming is also available. The output of OPTIMISIR comprises the operating decisions for each of the 12 months including: volumes to be taken from various water sources, volumes to be released to waterways, volumes to be stored in each reservoir and volumes to be transferred across the system. OPTIMISIR has two modes of use; standalone-use and the linked-use with Melbourne Water's REALM water supply system simulation model. This paper covers the standalone-use mode. With OPTIMISIR, the optimisation of 12-month operations can be completed in seconds. This enables the operators to generate at first a 'greenfield solution' that is not biased towards past operations and subsequently assess the impacts of various operating considerations by generating 'constrained solutions'. The paper presents the OPTIMISIR modelling approach and an example application. The paper particularly highlights the decision-support rather than decision-making nature of OPTIMISIR, in which the experience of system operators and the power of an easy-to-use modelling tool are combined in identifying a detailed operating plan that meets various operating considerations and the needs of stakeholders. The paper demonstrates the suitability of OPTIMISIR, as part of a suite of optimisation and simulation modeling tools, for the operation planning of Melbourne's water supply system.

Chapter 4 - Comparative analysis of water supply systems in megacities in developed and developing countries

Gondar town has been through a problem of sustainable potable water supply in the past ten years. Even if the modern water supply system was installed since 1930’s and has been expanding its service in the coming years, still the demand is not satisfied and large number of people do not have access to adequate amount of potable water. As a result residents are forced to get water from unprotected sources which are far from their homes. Besides, they also buy water frequently from illegal persons and incur additional cost. In line with these the main objective of this study was to assess the magnitude of water supply and its challenges and dynamics associated with unsustainable water supply in Gondar town. A survey was conducted on a randomly selected 120 House Holds and interviews with purposefully selected key informants. Emphasis was put on examining the nature of the problems of water supply and challenges the service providers and households faced. The study has confirmed that the town water supply service could not cover the demand of it with present existing capacity and based on the research outcome only 43.3 % of the respondents get water through their own private taps. All areas of the town could not get equal and proportional service and the tariff set is neither fair among the poor and rich households nor generates sufficient revenue to cover investment costs. The root causes of the challenging problems are institutional, financial, human and material resource constraints. That is, the water supplying service in the town is unsustainable; it is socially inequitable, economically inefficient and environmentally unsound. This study presents the following recommendations to ensure sustainable water supply in the study area including synchronizing different water sources, conserving water sources, family planning, demand management, demand oriented supply, participating different actors, mobilizing financial resources, and staffing organizational structure with skilled personnel and equipping it with material facilities. Key words: Water sources, supply and demand, production, distribution, consumption, accessibility, willingness to pay, cost recovery, sustainable water supply: Gondar

This article pinpoints the problem of no modern water supply and sewage systems in homes of ca. 22-24 million people in the Russian Federation residing in the countryside nowadays. As a statistical database, the authors use the results of the Rosstat surveys entitled "The Comprehensive monitoring of the living conditions of the population" that were conducted in 2011 and 2020. We analyze the data on cold and hot water supply systems, sewage systems and toilets in homes of households across the country in general, in rural areas and in individual houses (the private sector). The article reveals that there are no modern types of sewage systems in homes of almost two-thirds of households, whereas modern toilet is not installed in one-third, hot water supply — in 26 per cent, and cold water supply system — in homes of 11 per cent of households in rural areas. When considering individual houses in rural settlements the situation is even worse, and the numbers reach 81 per cent, 42 per cent, 30 per cent and 13 per cent respectively. Six groups of regions of the Russian Federation are distinguished by the share of households that do not have access to any water supply system in their homes. Subsequently, we define four reasons why rural areas have been consistently lagging behind cities and towns in terms of infrastructural development, including the decline of local Soviet-era agricultural enterprises (kolkhozes and sovkhozes) in the beginning of the 1990s and the development of rural territories as a generally low priority topic for the Federal executive bodies. The other two reasons are the virtual disconnection of rural territories from the state policies in the area of housing construction and utilities and the insufficient compatibility of the current model of providing state and municipal services to the population living mostly in individual houses on private land under the conditions of shortage of financial resources. In conclusion, we propose a set of measures aimed at boosting resolution of the ongoing problems with universal access to modern water supply and sewage systems in rural areas of the Russian Federation.

Because of the importance of water supply for the sustainability of urban areas, and due to the significant consumption of energy with prices increasing every day, an alternative solution for sustainable energy supply should be sought in the field of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). An innovative solution as presented in this paper has until now not been comprehensively analyzed. This work presents the solution with the application of a (Photovoltaic) PV generator. The main technological features, in addition to the designing methodology and case study are presented in this paper. The critical period approach has been used for the first time for system sizing. The application of this sizing method provides a high reliability of the proposed system. The obtained results confirm the assumption that the PV generator is a promising energy sustainable solution for urban water supply systems. The service reservoir, which acts as water and energy storage for the proposed system, provides the basis for a sustainable solution of water and energy supply. In accordance with the proposed, the reliability of such system is high. This concept of energy supply operation does not generate any atmospheric emission of greenhouse gases, which contributes significantly to the reduction of the impacts of climate changes. The proposed solution and designing methodology are widely applicable and in accordance with the characteristics of the water supply system and climate.

Although the supply of piped water to the Indian cities is increasing, the demand is not always fulfilled. This gap in water demand and supply is usually bridged by using alternate sources of water, mostly groundwater. Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka, is one of the fastest developing metropolitan cities in India is also facing piped water supply issues. The groundwater is the main source of alternate water supply in the city. In the present study, a District Metered Area (DMA) is selected in the Bangalore South-West division; this DMA has both intermittent and continuous water supply systems. The water distribution network (WDN) of study DMA contains four inlets and three supply zones. The first is a continuous water supply system whereas the second and third are the intermittent systems. The impact of inequitable supply in the study DMA is evaluated and the consumption of groundwater to cope with insufficient water supply is analyzed. The Lorenz Curve and Gini Coefficient are used to assess the inequity in groundwater extraction under intermittent and continuous supply zones. The data from the field flowmeters, consumer meter reading, and door-to-door questionnaire survey are used for the analysis. The questionnaire survey includes RR number, presence of wells/borewells, horsepower (HP) of the pumps used, building type, the number of inhabitants, and the floors in each building. In the continuous supply system, a questionnaire survey was untaken for 80% of the connections, whereas in the intermittent supply system random sampling was used. The questionnaire survey analysis showed that 53% of the consumers in the continuous supply system rely on piped water supply, whereas others used groundwater as well as piped water supply. The study illustrated the gap in groundwater consumption between supply zones within intermittent water supply systems as well as between intermittent and continuous water supply zones. Reliability on groundwater was high even in continuous supply systems indicating insufficient pressures resulting in unsatisfied demands. The study indicated that just increasing the access to the piped water supply to the consumers is not sufficient, the acceptable quality with adequate pressure of water should be delivered to reduce the use of groundwater. The inferences from the study can be used to regulate groundwater extraction.

<p>Sustainable development goals (6.1 and 6.2) call for full coverage with safely managed drinking water and safely managed sanitation by 2030. Thus, the UN Sustainable development goals declare to provide water, sanitation and hygiene for all and to involve local water users and find most suitable local practices for water provision.</p><p>While the MDGs highly promoted access to piped water and flushed toilets as the safest distribution of water and sanitation services, the SDGs promote access to all water sources and sanitation facilities if a safe management can be assured.</p><p>The SDGs "Safely managed drinking water" indicator includes the three following conditions: accessible on-premises, available when needed and free from contamination, and “Safely managed sanitation” indicator includes an improved sanitation facility which is: not shared, excreta is safely disposed in situ or excreta is transported and treated off-site. Thus, both centralized and decentralized water supply and sanitation systems are considered safe if met the sustainability criterias.</p><p>Since the Soviet Union time most of the centralized water systems in towns and rural areas in Kazakhstan were built in a linear way with piped water in and no sewer pipes out or limited wastewater collection pipes with no treatment and direct discharge. This research attempts to assess centralized water supply and sanitation systems on a household and the system levels in rural/urban areas in Kazakhstan using six sustainability components: environmental, socio-cultural, institutional, economic, health and technological sustainability. The survey included the questionannire of the households, discussions with the responsible for water supply systems and observation of water and sanitation points. The survey was conducted in three settlements with the access to centralised and decentralized water supply systems in Nothern part of Kazakhstan and covered 82% of the households. More than 85% of households used water from private sources; water from centralized sources if used mainly for watering the garden and not for drinking purposes. No sewer system was provided in the settlements and the waste/grey water is the responsibility of the household itself. Every household had pit laterine outside, meeting basic technical requirements and partially lacking the environmental safety requirements.  </p><p>For this study, several sustainability limitations were recognised where the most prevalent component, which consequently affected other components, was the institutional sustainability in the region, namely lack of community-based water supply systems,  the local municipality organization and regulation and education on maintaining the WSS systems.</p>

Community-based urban water management in fringe neighbourhoods: the case of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Powering an island system by renewable energy—A feasibility analysis in the Maldives

The growth and concentration of population, housing and industry in urban and suburban areas in the continuous evolution of a city over time causes complex social, economic, and physical challenges. The population and its relationship with the use and development of the land and water is a critical issue of urban growth, and since ancient times land, water and man were directly involved in the human populations’ survival. Nevertheless the current potential of study over this relationship between urban growth, water supply, drainage and water resources conditions becomes more and more attractive due to the possibility to make use of the broader variety of information sources and technologies readily available in recent years, with emphasis on the open data and on the big data as primary sources. In this regard we present some new possibilities of analyses over the demographics, land use/land cover and water supply and conservation based on a study over a Romanian region of development (Bucharest-Ilfov). As urban development usually outgrows the existing water supply systems, the resolution consists in drilling new and deeper wells, building new water distribution pipelines, building longer aqueducts and larger reservoirs, or finding new sources and constructing completely new water supply systems, water supplies may evolve this way from a result into a cause and driver of urban growth. The evolution trends of the studied area was estimated based on the open satellite time-series imagery and remote sensing techniques by land use/land cover extraction and the identification of the changes in urbanization. The survey is mainly focused on the expansion of the water network in terms of areal, total length and number of connections correlated with the amount of water produced, consumed and lost within a supply zone. Some urban human activities including the industrial ones alter water resource by pollution, over pumping of groundwater, construction of dams and reservoirs. In areas of rapid growth the worse problems came from the inadequate amount of potable water, the continuous deterioration of water quality and the slow progress in the water resources management and supply. The effects of urban dynamics over the water use and sustainability deserves an increasing study over the recent history in order to provide for an optimal management of the interrelationships between them.

The majority of the cities across the developing countries have saddled water supply and quality management issues. Unfortunately, even cities with adequate water resources and infrastructures foresee safe drinking water supply as a challenge. The present study discusses the potential hazardous events associated with a drinking water supply and management strategies in the case of Mysuru city, India to realize water security through integrated modeling approaches. Here, the water demand and supply of the city is simulated by the WEAP decision-making tool using current and reference data in the perspective of water supply trends concerning social-economic and environmental parameters. The study also projects sustainable utilization of recycled sewage as a portfolio resource having maximum potentiality. Finally, the study infers that that water supply system and portfolio water resources utilization would contribute to the sustainability of socio-economic and environmental conditions in the city. It provides various management, technological approaches and alternatives for sustainable water supply to meet anticipated demand and to understand the dynamic interactions of the water-socio-economic-health-environment nexus.Graphical AbstractIntegrated urban water resource management options and dynamic interaction of water-energy-socio-economic-health-environment nexus

Exploring the water-energy nexus in Brazil: The electricity use for water supply

The system of urban water supply network is the important lifeline project of the city. With the continuous development of social economy, people are no longer satisfied with water supply requirements, but to put forward higher requirements for the safety, reliability and economy of the water supply. Based on actual demands to solve the economic problems of water supply network to ensure the lowest costs in the laying the pipelines. First, establishing a mathematical model of water supply network, so we can use the knowledge of graph theory to solve this problem; from the above that, the minimum spanning tree was needed to establish to ensure that costs are the lowest in the case of pipeline connectivity. Then using the Kruskal algorithm to generate minimum spanning tree; finally, an example was analyzed to verify its practicality, and the algorithm solved the problem of water supply network in laying pipelines successfully.

A sociotechnical framework to characterize tipping points in water supply systems

Food and drink supply chains are complex, continually changing systems, involving many participants. They present stakeholders across the food and drinks industries with considerable challenges. Delivering performance in food supply chains offers expert perspectives to help practitioners and academics to improve their supply chain operations. The Editors have identified six key challenges in managing food and drinks supply chains. Each section of the book focuses on one of these important issues. The first chapters consider the fundamental role of relationship management in supply chains. The next section discusses another significant issue: aligning supply and demand. Part three considers five different approaches to effective and efficient process management, while quality and safety management, an issue food companies need to take very seriously, is subject of the next section. Parts five and six review issues which are currently driving change in food supply chains: the effective use of new technologies and the desire to deliver food sustainably and responsibly. With expert contributions from leaders in their fields, Delivering performance in food supply chains will help practitioners and academics to understand different approaches in supply chain management, explore alternative methods and develop more effective systems. Considers the fundamental role of relationship management in supply chains including an overview of performance measurement in the management of food supply chains Discusses the alignment of supply and demand in food supply chains and reviews sales and operations planning and marketing strategies for competitive advantage in the food industry Provides an overview of the effective use of new technologies and those that will be used in the future to deliver food sustainably and reliably