urban water Articles
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Transitioning to a waterways city: municipal context, capacity and commitment
In Melbourne, Australia, the adoption of Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) and the inclusion of best practice in new urban development has shifted the “drained city” of the 1960s toward an environmentally-oriented “waterways city” for the future. However, the “waterways city” is tenuous owing to the variable commitment of local municipalities to WSUD. This paper reports on the first phase of a ...
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Role of decentralised systems in the transition of urban water systems
Provision of conventional centralised water, wastewater and stormwater systems for urban municipal services has been common practice for over 100 years. These systems center around the protection of human health, ensuring reliable water supply and minimizing flooding; often with minimal consideration of the environmental and ecological impacts associated with fresh water extraction and wastewater ...
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Impediments and constraints in the uptake of water sensitive urban design measures in greenfield and infill developments
Water sensitive urban developments are designed with integrated urban water management concepts and water sensitive urban design measures. The initiatives that may be included are the substitution of imported drinking water with alternative sources using a fit-for-purpose approach and structural and non-structural measures for the source control of stormwater. A water sensitive approach to urban ...
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Substance flow analysis as a tool for urban water management
Human activity results in the production of a wide range of pollutants that can enter the water cycle through stormwater or wastewater. Among others, heavy metals are still detected in high concentrations around urban areas and their impact on aquatic organisms is of major concern. In this study, we propose to use a substance flow analysis as a tool for heavy metals management in urban areas. We ...
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Planning scales and approval processes for IUWM projects; lessons from Melbourne, Australia
In the Australian context integrated urban water management (IUWM) processes consistently recommend the implementation of recycled water and stormwater harvesting projects. These projects are typically decentralised and planned by a variety of organisational types. Major international research programmes have thus far focused on how IUWM should be operationalised as a single-tier, city scale ...
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Capturing the Potential of Stormwater
Management of the urban water cycle in Australia has changed significantly over the past few decades. Stormwater management philosophy has evolved from the conventional, but still important, flood mitigation paradigm, to the current runoff quality control approach. It is now progressing towards the harvesting and reuse concept whilst retaining the previous two targets. iven the current interest ...
By IVWater
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Determining water sensitive urban design project benefits using a multi-criteria assessment tool
The integration of urban water cycle management with urban planning and design is referred to as ‘Water Sensitive Urban Design’ or ‘WSUD’ in Australia; one of the key elements of WSUD is the management of urban stormwater. In early 2006, the Victorian Government released the Yarra River Action Plan, which allocated $20 million towards tackling urban stormwater pollution. To help ensure this money ...
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Response of epilithic diatom assemblages to urbanization influences
Urbanization has long been recognized to alter the hydrology, water quality and channel form of waterways. Recently, consideration of urban impacts on waterways has expanded to include assessment of the aquatic biota, generally focusing upon the macroinvertebrate fauna. This study compares the impacts of urbanization on the structure of stream benthic diatom communities in 16 first- and ...
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The influence of rainfall time resolution for urban water quality modelling
The objective of this paper is the definition of a methodology to evaluate the impact of the temporal resolution of rainfall measurements in urban drainage modelling applications. More specifically the effect of the temporal resolution on urban water quality modelling is detected analysing the uncertainty of the response of rainfall–runoff modelling. Analyses have been carried out using ...
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Rethinking urban areas: an example of an integrated blue-green approach
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 ...
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Integrated urban water management in commercial buildings
Monitoring results are presented as an annual water balance from the pioneering Landcare Research green building containing commercial laboratory and office space. The building makes use of harvested roof runoff to flush toilets and urinals and irrigate glasshouse experiments, reducing the demand for city-supplied water and stormwater runoff. Stormwater treatment devices also manage the runoff ...
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Urban impact on water bodies in the Luleå area, northern Sweden, and the role of redox processes
Sediment and water from urban water bodies in the Luleå area, northern Sweden, were studied to determine the degree of contamination from metals and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). The heavy metals Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn, which are of main concern in urban stormwater, are enriched in all investigated bays. PAH concentrations were also found to be enriched. The water and sediment ...
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Spatial distribution of PCDDs, PCDFs and dl-PCBs along the cascade of urban reservoirs
The river environment is a highly complex system with a variety of processes continuously changing along its continuum (River Continuum Concept). Therefore identification of the threats that result from different elements of the river ecosystem is an intricate task, mainly because of the transportation and biological, geological and chemical processes occurring in such a system. The overall ...
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Info-Gap robustness pathway method for transitioning of urban drainage systems under deep uncertainties
In the urban water cycle, there are different ways of handling stormwater runoff. Traditional systems mainly rely on underground piped, sometimes named ‘gray’ infrastructure. New and so-called ‘green/blue’ ambitions aim for treating and conveying the runoff at the surface. Such concepts are mainly based on ground infiltration and temporal storage. In this work a methodology to create and ...
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Aura, the city of colour – Australia's shining example of widescale integrated water cycle management
Aura, the ‘City of Colour’, is a 48,000 person masterplanned community on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Aura commenced construction in 2015 and will be developed over the next 25 years. Aura sets a benchmark in Australia regarding large scale urban water sustainability through the application of techniques such as rainwater capture and reuse, construction and operational stormwater treatment, ...
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A brief history of water supply and wastewater management in ancient Greece
The evolution of urban water management in ancient Greece begins in Crete during the Middle Bronze and the beginning of the Late Bronze Ages (ca. 2000–1500 B.C.) when many remarkable developments occurred in several stages as Minoan civilization flourished on the island. One of its salient characteristics was the architectural and hydraulic function of its water supply and sewerage systems in the ...
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Influence of the land use pattern on the concentrations and fluxes of priority pollutants in urban stormwater
This paper presents the results of the concentrations (μg/L) and fluxes (g/ha) of priority substances in stormwater from three watersheds with different land use patterns (namely, residential, urban dense, high urban density). Samples were collected at the outlet of these watersheds. Thirteen chemical groups were investigated corresponding to 88 individual substances before treatment. Results ...
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Forum: Urban storm water management: quantity and quality
A watershed can experience extra stresses due to the activities of urbanisation such as new land developments. This brief Forum paper raises two matters for discussion concerning best management prectices (BMPs) in this area: firstly, that it would be beneficial to have more continuous monitoring programs put in place to test and document the effectiveness of various BMPs in various regions; and ...
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Lost in calibration: why people still do not calibrate their models, and why they still should – a case study from urban drainage modelling
From a scientific point of view, it is unquestioned that numerical models for technical systems need to be calibrated. However, in sufficiently calibrated models are still used in engineering practice. Case studies in the scientific literature that deal with urban water management are mostly large cities, while little attention is paid to the differing boundary conditions of smaller ...
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Green infrastructure for flood-risk management in Dar es Salaam and Copenhagen: exploring the potential for transitions towards sustainable urban water management
The risk of flooding in urban areas could be better approached by complementing conventional sewer systems with sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) for storm-water management. This may be the case for developing world cities like Dar es Salaam with incomplete sewer services, as well as cities like Copenhagen with fully developed sewer systems. This paper explores some theories relevant to ...
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