Dynamic Metabolism Modeling as a Decision-Support Tool for Urban Water Utilities Applied to the Upstream of the Water System in Oslo, Norway

AbstractThe paper presents, first, the ‘Dynamic Metabolism Model’ (DMM), developed by the authors, followed by an application to the city of Oslo, capital city of Norway. The time period considered for the analysis is 2013-2043. The external factors impacting decision-making and interventions are talked about in brief, and some realistic scenarios revolving around these factors are drawn up for testing, after consultation with officials at the Oslo Water and Wastewater Works. Possible interventions that the utility intends to set in motion on the upstream are defined and numerically interpreted for incorporation into the DMM

Studying the demand-side vis-à-vis the supply-side of urban water systems – case study of Oslo, Norway

<div><p>The research focus of resource consumption and emissions from urban water services has, by and large, been restricted to what comes under the domain of the urban water utilities – the upstream sub-systems of water treatment and supply and the downstream sub-systems of wastewater collection, treatment and disposal. However, the material and energy flows necessitated by activities in the water demand sub-system (households, for instance) are by no means negligible. This paper studies the per-capita material and energy requirements, and the related emissions and life cycle environmental impacts, associated with water consumption in households of the city of Oslo for the year 2009. For example, the per-capita energy consumption in the household consumption phase, at 1.38 MWh per year, is eight times more than the corresponding consumption for the entire water-wastewater utility. All findings, taken together, clearly demonstrate the imperativeness of paying more attention to the demand-side management issues.</p></div

Metabolism-modelling approaches to long-term sustainability assessment of urban water services

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Urban Water Journal on 24 July 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1573062X.2015.1057184There is a discernible need for a holistic, long-term-sustainability approach in decision-making in water and wastewater utilities around the world. Metabolism-based modelling, which can quantify various flows within an urban water system (UWS), has shown its effective usability for a more comprehensive understanding of the impacts of intervention strategies and can be used by any water utility for future planning of UWS. This study presents the main principles of a holistic Sustainability Assessment Framework which can be simulated by using two analytical, conceptual, mass-balance-based models to quantify relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with the metabolic flows of the urban water cycle. These two models are WaterMet2 (WM2) and Dynamic Metabolism Model (DMM), developed recently under the aegis of the EU TRUST (Transitions to the Urban Water Services of Tomorrow) project. There are clear differences between the two models which make them useful in different contexts and circumstantial situations. DMM is a mass-balance consistent model which quantifies and presents annually-aggregated performance values for system wide energy consumption, emissions, environmental impacts and costs for the entire UWS though it is also possible to derive corresponding indicators for individual sub-systems (e.g. water distribution and wastewater transport). Opposite of this, WM2 is a distributed metabolism model which simulates water related and other resources flows throughout the UWS components with a higher resolution both spatially (e.g. multiple water resources and service reservoirs) and temporally (e.g. daily and monthly), and thereby is useful in contexts where utilities would like to focus on further details of the UWS metabolism with the aim to understand and solve specific problems. Overall, these two complementary metabolism-based approaches enable any water utility to quantitatively explore and understand the influences of different external drivers and intervention strategies on future performance profiles linked to any physical, environmental and economic criteria