urban water Articles
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Water and the city: exploring links between urban growth and water demand management
Urban water management is currently understood as a socio-technical problem, including both technologies and engineering interventions as well as socioeconomic dimensions and contexts vis-à-vis both end users and institutions. In this framework, perhaps the most important driver of urban water demand, at the intersection between engineering, social and economic domains, is urban growth. ...
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The cubic water Kuznets curve: patterns of urban water consumption and water policy effects
Utilizing panel data collected in 27 countries from 1960 to 2010, we demonstrate that the relationship between per capita urban water consumption and per capita gross domestic product exhibits an N-shaped pattern. Following the environmental Kuznets curve literature, this relationship can be named the cubic water Kuznets curve. We also demonstrate that water policies significantly influence ...
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Capacity attributes of future urban water management regimes: projections from Australian sustainability practitioners
Transitioning to more sustainable urban water management is widely accepted as an essential societal objective. While there has been significant progress in developing technical solutions to the challenges faced, numerous barriers remain at the regime level, indicating that further investigation into the regime is required. This paper reports on a social research project aimed at identifying ...
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Introduction
Different definitions of water governance will be reviewed and the question will be asked: Why is water governance important? Subsequently, some theoretical insights will be reviewed concerning the factors influencing successful water governance. A theoretical framework will be provided. Currently, water governance structures are often not able to deal with these factors, which require reform and ...
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Working towards sustainable urban water management: the vulnerability blind spot
The unprecedented water scarcity in Australia coincides with the adoption of a new urban water rhetoric. The ‘Security through Diversity’ strategy has been adopted in a number of Australian cities as a new and innovative approach to urban water management. Although this strategy offers a more holistic approach to urban water management, in practice, the Security through Diversity strategy is ...
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Customer perspectives on new urban water services
The TRUST report "Customer perspectives on new urban water services" presents the results of an initial literature review, encompassing both academic and grey literature, which focused on understanding the "customer perspective" and what they value and might be willing to pay for - around the future of urban water services. It starts with a review exploring the concept of how different users ...
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Multiple conceptions of sustainable urban water systems: problem or asset?
This paper examines various conceptions that researchers and practitioners in the sector have about sustainable urban water systems, to discern what these conceptions are and whether they are complementary or divergent. The study is based on a literature review and field studies, including semi-structured interviews. The results show that the conceptions held by the various actors are largely ...
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Prediction of urban water demand on the basis of Engel's coefficient and Hoffmann index: case studies in Beijing and Jinan, China
Domestic and industrial water uses are the most important segment of urban water consumption. Traditional urban water demand models are usually based on water consumption quotas or statistical relationships, which usually overestimate urban water demands. The efficiency of domestic and industrial water uses is associated with living standards and levels of industrialization. The correlation ...
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Realising sustainable urban water management: Can social theory help?
It has been acknowledged, in Australia and beyond, that existing urban water systems and management lead to unsustainable outcomes. Therefore, our current socio-technical systems, consisting of institutions, structures and rules, which guide traditional urban water practices, need to change. If a change towards sustainable urban water management (SUWM) practices is to occur, a transformation of ...
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Integrated water resource planning in the context of climate uncertainty
In many locations, climate change may significantly reduce urban water supplies and could also affect water demand. With uncertainty around future climate, supply-demand planning needs to adapt. This paper addresses the question: How does climate change alter Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) for urban water? The paper covers the setting of planning objectives in the face of climate change, ...
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Impacts of variable energy prices on the financial sustainability of water facilities: case from Ghana
Water is conveyed to consumers through systems that generally rely heavily on energy. The dependence on energy is a major challenge to utility providers because of frequent variation in energy prices. This paper assesses the effect of energy price changes on the financial sustainability of water facilities. It further investigates the proportion of energy cost to total costs of water supply. The ...
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Efficient multi-objective optimization methods for computationally intensive urban water resources models
Multi-objective optimization methods require many thousands of objective function evaluations. For urban water resource problems such evaluations can be computationally very expensive. The question as to which optimization method is the best choice for a given function evaluations budget in urban water resource problems remains unexplored. The main objective of this paper is to address this ...
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Why is Germany 30 years ahead of England?
The question is asked why Germany in the field of water management is 30 years ahead of England? In terms of the delivery of integrated urban water management technologies, Germany is indeed 20 to 30 years in advance of England. The comparison is made on 12 dimensions and illustrates how dramatic the effect of governance can be in the adoption of innovations in water management and hence the ...
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Inequality and polarization analysis of urban water use in the Yangtze River Delta area, China
Inequality and polarization are terms usually used to describe the overall dispersion of income distribution and the phenomenon of a divided society with a disappearing middle class and increasing rich and poor populations. However, these terms have seldom been used in water sciences. In this paper, the concepts of inequality and polarization are employed to analyze the distribution of urban ...
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Urban Water Supply of Iskandar Region, Johor, Malaysia
Iskandar region is an economic region established by the Government of Malaysia. Being one of the fastest growing regions in the country, Iskandar Region has to cope with challenges in providing water supply to its population and industry. However, despite the sky-high demand of water, the water supply capability still needs lots of improvement. Demand will slowly outweigh the supply and by year ...
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Development and application of the anarchic society algorithm (ASO) to the optimal operation of water distribution networks
Optimizing the design and operation of urban water distribution networks (WDNs) is a complex, nonlinear problem. The optimization of WDNs can be performed for the pumping schedule, the location and elevation of reservoirs, the physical characteristics of pipes, and the placement of pressure-reducing valves, among other objectives. This study applies the anarchic society optimization (ASO) ...
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Linking water policy innovation and urban renewal: the case of Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Different strategy positions are possible with regard to new urban water infrastructural investments. A relatively new position argues that new water infrastructure needs to be linked to ongoing urban developments. This article investigates how the urban water management organizations in Rotterdam developed its climate adaptation strategy by creating urban development strategies that are ...
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Researchers as actors in urban water governance? Perspectives on learning alliances as an innovative mechanism for change
Learning alliances (LA) are an innovative researcher–initiated intervention in urban water management. Their design implies that researchers actively engage with urban water management and governance issues. Researchers' views and their role in LA are considered alongside views from 'city stakeholders'. Findings from a series of interviews and observations conducted during the course of the ...
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Modelling the urban water cycle as an integrated part of the city: a review
In contrast to common perceptions, the urban water infrastructure system is a complex and dynamic system that is constantly evolving and adapting to changes in the urban environment, to sustain existing services and provide additional ones. Instead of simplifying urban water infrastructure to a static system that is decoupled from its urban context, new management strategies use the complexity ...
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