Functional quality of urban surface water

Abstract

The key urban water management concept is sustainable or integrated Urban Water Resources Management (UWRM). This concept promotes integration of water management and spatial planning for holistic management of all parts of the water cycle, including both natural and technical water infrastructure (Feilberg & Mark, 2016;Hering & Vairavamoorthy, 2018;Kirshen et al., 2018). The integration of water management and urban spatial planning is also advocated in the United Nations' New Urban Agenda (UN, 2017). Integrated management requires knowledge of each component of the water system (Mosleh & Negahban-Azar, 2021); surface water is one such component. To create This research is targeted at water-rich cities with relatively high water quality, such as in Europe and Northern America, because their surface water system can support a broad spectrum of water uses. The study areas for in-depth assessments in this thesis are the cities of Amsterdam in The Netherlands (Europe), Ghent in Belgium (Europe) and Toronto in Canada (Northern America). Amsterdam serves as study area in each phase of the research, while Ghent and Toronto are used as study area for specific research activities.The assessment of the current use of and future demand for urban surface water use functions is conducted for Amsterdam and Toronto. These cities are selected because they represent cities on different continents, with different climates and geographic characteristics, including different types of surface waters (Table 1.1). This variation broadens the relevance of this study. Amsterdam and Toronto are medium sized cities with respectively 854,047 and 2.96 million inhabitants. This is a relevant size class for studying urban surface water use and demand because most city dwellers in Europe and Northern America live in cities with a population of respectively 500,00 to 5 million inhabitants and 1 to 10 million inhabitants; this is expected to continue through 2030 (UN, 2019). In both cities, urban redevelopment leads to land use change and densification. Together with local water quality improvements, especially reductions of nutrient concentrations and faecal pollution (