The continuous expansion of urban areas is associated with increased water demand, both for domestic and non-domestic uses. To cover this additional demand, centralised infrastructure, such as water supply and distribution networks tend to become more and more complicated and are eventually over-extended with adverse effects on their reliability. To address this, there exist two main strategies: (a) Tools and algorithms are employed to optimise the operation of the external water supply system, in an effort to minimise risk of failure to cover the demand (either due to the limited availability of water resources or due to the limited capacity of the transmission system and treatment plants) and (b) demand management is employed to reduce the water demand per capita. Dedicated tools do exist to support the implementation of these two strategies separately. However, there is currently no tool capable of handling the complete urban water system, from source to tap, allowing for an investigation of these two strategies at the same time and thus exploring synergies between the two. This paper presents a new version of the UWOT model (Makropoulos et al., 2008), which adopts a metabolism modelling approach and is now capable of simulating the complete urban water cycle from source to tap and back again: the tool simulates the whole water supply network from the generation of demand at the household level to the water reservoirs and tracks wastewater generation from the household through the wastewater system and the treatment plants to the water bodies. UWOT functionality is demonstrated in the case of the water system of Athens and outputs are compared against the current operational tool used by the Water Company of Athens. Results are presented and discussed: The discussion highlights the conditions under which a single source-to-tap model is more advantageous than dedicated subsystem models.

Abstract. The HYDROGEIOS modelling framework represents the main processes of the hydrological cycle in heavily modified catchments, with decision-depended abstractions and interactions between surface and groundwater flows. A semi-distributed approach and a monthly simulation time step are adopted, which are sufficient for water resources management studies. The modelling philosophy aims to ensure consistency with the physical characteristics of the system, while keeping the number of parameters as low as possible. Therefore, multiple levels of schematization and parameterization are adopted, by combining multiple levels of geographical data. To optimally allocate human abstractions from the hydrosystem during a planning horizon or even to mimic the allocation occurred in a past period (e.g. the calibration period), in the absence of measured data, a linear programming problem is formulated and solved within each time step. With this technique the fluxes across the hydrosystem are estimated, and the satisfaction of physical and operational constraints is ensured. The model framework includes a parameter estimation module that involves various goodness-of-fit measures and state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms for global and multiobjective optimization. By means of a challenging case study, the paper discusses appropriate modelling strategies which take advantage of the above framework, with the purpose to ensure a robust calibration and reproduce natural and human induced processes in the catchment as faithfully as possible.

Abstract. The modelling of human-modified basins that are inadequately measured constitutes a challenge for hydrological science. Often, models for such systems are detailed and hydraulics-based for only one part of the system while for other parts oversimplified models or rough assumptions are used. This is typically a bottom-up approach, which seeks to exploit knowledge of hydrological processes at the micro-scale at some components of the system. Also, it is a monomeric approach in two ways: first, essential interactions among system components may be poorly represented or even omitted; second, differences in the level of detail of process representation can lead to uncontrolled errors. Additionally, the calibration procedure merely accounts for the reproduction of the observed responses using typical fitting criteria. The paper aims to raise some critical issues, regarding the entire modelling approach for such hydrosystems. For this, two alternative modelling strategies are examined that reflect two modelling approaches or philosophies: a dominant bottom-up approach, which is also monomeric and, very often, based on output information, and a top-down and holistic approach based on generalized information. Critical options are examined, which codify the differences between the two strategies: the representation of surface, groundwater and water management processes, the schematization and parameterization concepts and the parameter estimation methodology. The first strategy is based on stand-alone models for surface and groundwater processes and for water management, which are employed sequentially. For each model, a different (detailed or coarse) parameterization is used, which is dictated by the hydrosystem schematization. The second strategy involves model integration for all processes, Correspondence to: I. Nalbantis (nalbant@central.ntua.gr) parsimonious parameterization and hybrid manual-automatic parameter optimization based on multiple objectives. A test case is examined in a hydrosystem in Greece with high complexities, such as extended surface-groundwater interactions, ill-defined boundaries, sinks to the sea and anthropogenic intervention with unmeasured abstractions both from surface water and aquifers. Criteria for comparison are the physical consistency of parameters, the reproduction of runoff hydrographs at multiple sites within the studied basin, the likelihood of uncontrolled model outputs, the required amount of computational effort and the performance within a stochastic simulation setting. Our work allows for investigating the deterioration of model performance in cases where no balanced attention is paid to all components of human-modified hydrosystems and the related information. Also, sources of errors are identified and their combined effect are evaluated.

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The provision of high quality urban water services, the assets of which are often conceptualised as ‘blue infrastructure’, is essential for public health and quality of life in the cities. On the other hand, parks, recreation grounds, gardens, green roofs and in general ‘green infrastructure’, provide a range of (urban) ecosystem services (including quality of life and aesthetics) and could also be thought of as inter alia contributors to the mitigation of floods, droughts, noise, air pollution and urban heat island (UHI) effects, improvement of biodiversity, amenity values and human health. Currently, these ‘blue’ and ‘green’ assets/infrastructure are planned to operate as two separate systems despite the obvious interactions between them (for example, low runoff coefficient of green areas resulting in reduction of stormwater flows, and irrigation of green areas by potable water in increasing pressure on water supply systems). This study explores the prospects of a more integrated ‘blue-green’ approach – tested at the scale of a household. Specifically, UWOT (the Urban Water Optioneering Tool) was extended and used to assess the potential benefits of a scheme that employed locally treated greywater along with harvested rainwater for irrigating a green roof. The results of the simulations indicated that the blue-green approach combined the benefits of both ‘green’ and ‘blue’ technologies/services and at the same time minimised the disadvantages of each when installed separately.

The implementation of local water recycling and reuse practices is considered as a possible approach to managing issues of water scarcity. The sustainable design and implementation of a water recycle/reuse scheme has to achieve an optimum compromise between costs ͑including energy͒ and benefits ͑potable water demand reduction͒. Another factor that should be taken into account is the influence of potential changes in climatic conditions to the scheme's efficiency. These issues were assessed in this study using the urban water optioneering tool. Two water-recycling schemes, a rainwater harvesting and a combination of rainwater harvesting and local greywater recycling, were assessed. The trade-off between potable water demand reduction, capital/operational cost, and energy consumption of the two schemes was derived under three basic climatic conditions ͑oceanic, Mediterranean, and desert͒ using evolutionary optimization. Furthermore, the impact of changing climatic conditions on the suggested schemes was analyzed to assess the robustness of the proposed design choices to climatic changes. The results indicate that schemes that are efficient in their use of local greywater are less susceptible to changes in climatic conditions, while schemes based exclusively on rainwater harvesting are more susceptible to changes the more efficient they become.

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