Environmental assessment of construction and renovation of water distribution networks considering uncertainty analysis

Abstract

Applying life cycle assessment (LCA) to water distribution networks (WDNs) usually requires considerable reliable data, and neglecting specific parts could significantly affect the reliability of results. In this paper, a comprehensive life cycle inventory dataset was collected to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with the construction and renovation stages of WDNs. The aim is to explore the effects of the availability of primary and secondary data on the LCA results based on analysis of uncertainties. The results indicate the importance of considering road construction processes, especially for small-tomedium-sized plastic pipes. Although recovering energy from the incineration of plastic pipes partially compensates for the impacts at the end of life, these incineration processes significantly affect the global warming potential. Finally, this study demonstrates that without considering all known information (e.g., network data), reliable LCA for WDNs can be performed, providing suggestions on which data to focus on in data collection process.

Delayed pipe replacement halves environmental impacts but quadruples water loss

“…So far, only six other studies have conducted an LCA of WDSs in the context of pipe aging and optimal replacement frequency with a comparable scope to the current study (Haidery & Bas, 2020;Hajibabaei et al, 2018Hajibabaei et al, , 2020Khan, 2019;Parvez, 2019;Sanjuan-Delm as et al, 2014). As noted in Table 2, there is some variation in the reported impacts normalized to length of pipe placed.…”

How Can Environmental Impacts of Water Demand Management Policies on a Wastewater System be Assessed?

“…Despite the nominal environmental impacts rate of asphalt and repairing broken pipes, its environmental effects cannot be ignored. In this regard, previous studies highlighted the importance of the asphalt layer in road construction, too (Hajibabaei et al, 2020). The quantitative results of global warming category as one of the most important issues around the world have been described in the following sub-section.…”

Determining the Environmental Potentials of Urban Pavements by Applying the Cradle-to-Cradle LCA Approach for a Road Network of a Midscale German City

“…A Monte Carlo simulation was performed to verify the reliability of the environmental impact results using SimaPro software. In LCA, the uncertainty comes from the input data collected, which can be described by a specific distribution characterized by a standard deviation [38]. The standard deviation of each life cycle inventory entry is calculated by using the pedigree matrix method proposed by Ecoinvent [36,39], which is based on six factors (i.e., reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, geographical correlation, technological correlation, and sample size) [36,39].…”