A Modelling Tool to Inform City Scale Integrated Water Cycle Management Plans
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A modelling tool to inform city scale integrated water cycle management plans Shiroma Maheepala1, Ashis Dey2 and Fareed Mirza1 1CSIRO, 37 Graham Road, Highett, Victoria 3190, Australia; [email protected]; [email protected] 2eWater, Innovation Centre, University Drive, Bruce, ACT 2617, Australia; [email protected] Abstract Integrated Water Cycle Management (IWCM) is an alternative approach for the traditional management of urban water systems. In recent times, there has been an increased interest for incorporating IWCM principles into urban water systems planning. This is to maximise the productivity, liveability and resilience of urban areas. The first step of adopting IWCM principles is development of an IWCM Plan. However, development of an IWCM plan for a town or a city is a complex task. It requires identifying urban water management options that have the potential to contribute towards achieving IWCM principles, understanding their hydrological, water quality, economic, social and environmental implications, and evaluating them to identify the most effective options that have the potential to maximise IWCM objectives. There are multiple objectives to satisfy. Therefore, there can be many different ways to provide water services, but not all solutions can best meet the objectives. Identifying the most efficient options that can best meet a given set of objectives cannot be done manually. A modelling tool is essential to evaluate the options and identify trade-offs between them. The focus of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of Source, a modelling tool specifically developed to address Integrated Water Resource Management in river basins, to inform the development of IWCM Plans in cities. Using a hypothetical case study, this paper has demonstrated how the Source model and its optimisation tool, Insight, can be used to identify efficient water sourcing options that can best meet a given set of objectives. The objectives considered in the study are aimed at minimising the total cost of supply and discharges to coastal receiving waters, while maximising the supply reliability. Introduction Integrated Water Cycle Management (IWCM), known also as Total water cycle management or Integrated Urban Water Management), is an alternative approach for the traditional management of urban water systems. The key aim of the traditional water management is to provide safe and reliable water service while minimising financial cost of the service delivery. In contrast, the aim of IWCM is to maximise the contribution of urban water system to the productivity and liveability of urban areas, while minimising its impact on the natural environment (Maheepala, et al., 2010). This is primarily achieved by using resources more frugally and efficiently, and by generating less wastes and harmful emissions through resource recovery. In recent years, there has been an increased interest to incorporate IWCM principles (Burn et al., 2012) into urban water planning, and develop IWCM plans. Successfully implemented, IWCM plans have the potential to maximise supply security, improve quality of receiving water, increase infrastructure productivity, minimise carbon footprint, optimise the recovery of water, energy and nutrient resources, and maximise the benefits and value of water in the urban environment. Development of an IWCM plan for any town or city is a complex task. It requires identifying urban water management options that have the potential to contribute towards achieving IWCM principles, understanding their hydrological, water quality, economic, social and environmental implications, and evaluating them to identify the most effective options that have the potential to 1 maximise IWCM objectives. There are multiple objectives to satisfy. Therefore, there can be many different ways to provide water services, but not all solutions can best meet the objectives. Identifying the most efficient options that can best meet a given set of objectives cannot be done manually. A modelling tool is essential to evaluate the options and identify trade-off between them. Understanding trade-offs associated with options is vital to inform the development of an IWCM plan. Given the need for considering total water cycle, the modelling tool should have the capacity to represent the dynamics of whole urban water system (i.e. supply, demand, stormwater, wastewater and receiving water), along with an ability to optimise multiple objectives that is often related to implications of urban water services on physical, economic, social and environmental domains. The modelling tools capable of representing dynamics of total urban water cycle include Urban Developer (eWater, 2012a), Aquacycle (Mitchell et al., 2001), WaterCress model (Clark et al. 2002), Source (eWater, 2012b) and WEAP (Water Evaluation and Planning, Sieber and Purkey, 2011). Some are applicable at single lot and development (i.e. a number of single lots) scales, such as Urban Developer and Aquacycle, and some are applicable for basin and city scales such as WaterCress, Source and WEAP. Since the focus of this paper is city scale, this paper only looks at city scale tools. Some background analyses have been done in order to select the appropriate tool for this study. The initial observation has shown that tools like WaterCress, WEAP or Source would be more appropriate to achieve the goal of this study. The WEAP model operates on the basic principle of a water balance. It can simulate a broad range of natural and engineered components of these systems, including rainfall runoff, base flow, and groundwater recharge, demand analyses, water conservation, water rights and allocation priorities, reservoir operations, hydropower generation, pollution tracking and water quality, vulnerability assessments, and ecosystem requirements. The WaterCress model has features similar to the WEAP model. It has been used widely in South Australia whereas the WEAP model has been used in many countries. The Source model is an Australian model, and is designed to simulate all aspects of water resource systems to support integrated planning, operations and governance from urban, catchment to river basin scales including human and ecological influences. Source accommodates diverse climatic, geographic, water policy and governance settings for both Australian and international climatic conditions. Source provides a consistent hydrological and water quality modelling and reporting framework to support transparent urban, catchment and river management decisions. Fundamental to this design is the flexibility which makes it readily customisable and easy to update as new science becomes available. New capabilities can be incorporated via plugins developed to suit particular needs while maintaining the overarching consistent decision and policy framework. The strengths of the Source model over WEAP and WaterCress models are its flexibility and plug-in functionalities. While all three models can be dynamically linked with standalone optimisation tools (for example, Paton et al. (2014) linked WaterCress model with a multi-objective algorithm based on the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) (Deb, 2001), and Vonk et al. (2014) linked WEAP model with NSGA-II), the Source model has an added benefit with regard to optimisation, due to the existence of its customised optimisation tool, Insight (eWater, 2012). The Insight tool, also uses NSGA-II to provide multi-objective optimisation capability, and is fully compatible with the Source model, which makes it easier to use for optimisation purposes, in conjunction with a simulation model developed using the Source model, without spending time on linking aspects of the models. This is an important aspect to consider, particular for practitioners who may not have time and resources for linking models. The Source model has also been recognised as the national hydrologic modelling platform in Australia by the Australian Government. Considering all these benefits it has been decided that Source would be the tool of choice for this study. 2 However, most of Source applications to date are for river basin modelling to inform development of integrated water resource plans in river basins. Therefore, its abilities to inform IWCM plans in urban areas are not well known. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the use of Source model and its companion optimisation tool Insight, to inform the identification of most efficient ways of providing water supply services, for a given city, in terms of a defined set of objectives. The objectives are aimed at providing a productive, environmentally sustainable and resilient city. It should be noted that identifying the most efficient ways of providing water supply services is a key attribute of an IWCM plan. Hence this study demonstrates the nature of analysis undertaken to inform a key attribute of an IWCM plan. Case study A hypothetical case study has been designed to represent a coastal city with a current population of 2.5 million in a Mediterranean climate with hot summers and mild winters. Water supply for the city is considered to be currently sourced from two surface water reservoirs. Each reservoir has a capacity of 200 GL. The average annual demand of the city is assumed to be 344 GL (i.e. 377 L/person/day). At present, surface water is just adequate to meet water demand of the city. Wastewater and stormwater generated from the city is considered to be collected via two independent pipe networks and discharged