Study on Mass, Water and Energy Balances as an Urban Ecosystem

Abstract

In this study, we carried out water, energy, and mass balance analyses as an urban ecosystem for the effective management of urban environmental system utilizing statistics, census, and researches concerning these balances directed by governmental organizations. These flows generally have two sorts of subflows: natural and manmade. We differentiated and compared these two subflows in water, energy balance analyses. For the mass flow, however, only manmade mass flow, physical distribution was investigated. The analyses showed the characteristics of Tokyo Metropolis from the viewpoint of the urban ecosystem; huge amount of energy and water is intensively consumed by the densely concentrated large population and the manmade flows overwhelming the natural ones have an important role in the Tokyo ecosystem.