A metabolism perspective on alternative urban water servicing options using water mass balance

Abstract

Please cite this article as: Farooqui, T.A., Renouf, M.A., Kenway, S.J., A metabolism perspective on alternative urban water servicing options using water mass balance, Water Research (2016Research ( ), doi: 10.1016Research ( /j.watres.2016 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Urban areas will need to pursue new water servicing options to ensure local supply security. 18Decisions about how best to employ them are not straightforward due to multiple considerations 19 and the potential for problem shifting among them. We hypothesise that urban water metabolism 20 evaluation based a water mass balance can contribute to this, and explore the utility of this 21 perspective and the new insights it provides about water servicing options. Using a water mass 22 M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTbalance evaluation framework, which considers direct urban water flows (both 'natural' 23 hydrological and 'anthropogenic' flows), as well as water-related energy, we evaluated how use 24 of alternative water sources (stormwater / rainwater harvesting, wastewater / greywater recycling) 25 at different scales influences the 'local water metabolism' of a case study urban development. 26New indicators were devised to represent the water-related 'resource efficiency' and 27 'hydrological performance' of the urban area. The new insights gained were the extent to which 28 alternative water supplies influence the water efficiency and hydrological performance of the 29 urban area, and the potential energy trade-offs. The novel contribution is the development of new 30 indicators of urban water resource performance that bring together considerations of both the 31 'anthropogenic' and 'natural' water cycles, and the interactions between them. These are used for 32 the first time to test alternative water servicing scenarios, and to provide a new perspective to 33 complement broader sustainability assessments of urban water. 34

Performance assessment of water reuse strategies using integrated framework of urban water metabolism and water-energy-pollution nexus

“…The theory and concept of urban water metabolism includes a wide range of performance implications, changing from resource efficiency and hydrological performance of different water servicing options in Australia (Farooqui et al 2016), to ecological relationships among different UWS sectors and their wastewater discharges in China (Zheng et al 2019). The integration of urban metabolism and the nexus approaches for performance assessment in real-world systems has not been employed substantially.…”

Urban Metabolism of Bangalore City: A Water Mass Balance Analysis

“…; Farooqui et al. ). Moreover, the latest UWMF still does not include components such as system loss, which is a significant flow component of a UWMF (30% to 50%) in developing countries and also in some other parts of the world (CSE ; Kingdom et al.…”

“…The framework included alternative sources of water such as rainwater, surface runoff, wastewater, decentralized water supply, evapotranspiration, and groundwater infiltration. Recently, this framework was further refined by Farooqui and colleagues () by incorporating other flows such as decentralized recycled water within and outside an urban system. But Renouf and colleagues () reported that the framework has further scope to develop by incorporating water use for ecosystem services.…”

“…The literature reviews further found that an UM framework built on water mass balance is useful to analyze complex urban water systems, but this framework has not yet been tested with real cases in developing countries; for example, the UWMF of Kenway and colleagues (), refined by Farooqui and colleagues (), was tested for a hypothetical urban development area in Australia. In this study, we have applied the refined UM framework/equation to Bangalore, a fast‐growing developing city, as a real case example.…”

Urban water metabolism indicators derived from a water mass balance – Bridging the gap between visions and performance assessment of urban water resource management

“…While the visions are articulated in different ways (Table A1), some consistencies are evident in the key objectives, including access to water and sanitation, supply security, environmental protection, the functionality of urban water, risk management of extreme conditions (resilience to droughts and floods) and institutional aspects (Table 1). They focus on the management of direct water (real flows of water from surrounding regions) and not on indirect water (that embodied in the goods and services produced using water from elsewhere) (Renouf and Kenway 2016).When existing performance indicators are compared to the objectives derived from the vision statements (Table 1) we find a misalignment.…”