Water Systems Analysis, Design, and Planning

Urban Infrastructure

Mohammad Karamouz

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000487350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Hydrology

This book presents three distinct pillars for analysis, design, and planning: urban water cycle and variability as the state of water being; landscape architecture as the medium for built-by-design; and total systems as the planning approach. The increasing demand for water and urban and industrial expansions have caused myriad environmental, social, economic, and political predicaments. More frequent and severe floods and droughts have changed the resiliency and ability of water infrastructure systems to operate and provide services to the public. These concerns and issues have also changed the way we plan and manage our water resources.

Focusing on urban challenges and contexts, the book provides foundational information regarding water science and engineering while also examining topics relating to urban stormwater, water supply, and wastewater infrastructures. It also addresses critical emerging issues such as simulation and economic modeling, flood resiliency, environmental visualization, satellite data applications, and digital data model (DEM) advancements.

Features:

• Explores various theoretical, practical, and real-world applications of system analysis, design, and planning of urban water infrastructures

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• Discusses hydrology, hydraulics, and basic laws of water flow movement through natural and constructed environments

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• Describes a wide range of novel topics ranging from water assets, water economics, systems analysis, risk, reliability, and disaster management

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• Examines the details of hydrologic and hydrodynamic modeling and simulation of conceptual and data-driven models

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• Delineates flood resiliency, environmental visualization, pattern recognition, and machine learning attributes

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• Explores a compilation of tools and emerging techniques that elevate the reader to a higher plateau in water and environmental systems management

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Water Systems Analysis, Design, and Planning: Urban Infrastructure serves as a useful resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in the areas of water resources and systems analysis, as well as practicing engineers and landscape professionals.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.1201/9781003241744-1

1.1 Introduction

This book has been assembled with the intent of exploring various theoretical, practical, and real-world applications of system analysis, design, and planning of urban water infrastructures. Review and inclusion of some of the recent research done in each area has also been covered. To that end, 14 chapters of this book are organized in an integrated fashion in order to be used as a whole package, while each chapter can be utilized independently. Four chapters have been dedicated to background information regarding water science and engineering focusing on urban challenges. Subsequently, another three chapters cover stormwater, water supply, wastewater, and related infrastructures, followed by four chapters discussing a wide range of novel topics ranging from water assets, water economics, systems analysis, risk, reliability, and disaster management. Finally, modeling, flood resiliency, and environmental visualization chapters are a compilation of tools and emerging techniques that elevate us to a higher plateau in water systems’ assessment. Another key feature of this book is the taking into account of the critical emerging urban and coastal issues such as satellite applications, citizen science, and digital elevation model (DEM) advancements in water-related issues.

One might think what is precisely unique about the contents of this book that could make it distinctive. To address that, it could plausibly be argued that there are very few textbooks available containing such different and comprehensive teaching materials on urban water infrastructure. Furthermore, this book's uniqueness has been assured through: (a) transparency, (b) technical soundness, (c) containment of exciting materials, (d) practicality, and (e) being forward-looking. Each of the mentioned attributes is further elaborated as follows:

1. Transparency: Arguments made in this book are supported by latest journal articles’ citations and then illustrated through example problems. They are easy to follow and flow in a logical order. Chapters have a clear organizational structure with an introduction and a concluding remarks sections that sum up the most significant points of the chapter.
2. Technical soundness: Much experience and feedback have been derived from the last four textbooks of the author and have been put to use in gatherings in this book. The scientific phenomena discussed in this book are professionally based and have been tested in the included case studies.
3. Excitement: Each chapter has a distinctive characteristic and attributes ranging from science to engineering to a planning voyage, urban lifeline characteristics, system thinking, and dynamics all the way to asset/value-driven goals, to resiliency, pattern recognition, and environmental visualization.
4. Practicality: Targeting some of the most pressing real-world challenges through a practical approach by means of case studies that include engineering judgments and practice attributes.
5. Forward-looking: Covering the state-of-the-art technologies available and the emerging challenges topics such as satellite and digital data evolution; growing reliance on risk and uncertainty based solutions; and disaster preparedness planning.

Water and science of water (hydrology), urban water movement and services, infrastructures, and institutional supports are our domain in this book. Spatial and temporal variability; and social, environmental, and economic issues are the states. The driving forces are natural hazards; human and anthropogenic interventions; water lifeline services; and health, safety, and preparedness attributes for planning purposes.

A watershed is the best hydrological unit that can be used to carry out water studies and planning. In urban areas, the term sewershed is often used that has watershed characteristics with man-made drainage elements. The urban setting alters the natural movement of water. Drastic land use changes in urban areas are a subset of urban and industrial development affecting natural landscapes and the hydrological response of watersheds. Although anthropogenic factors concerning waterways, pipes, abstractions, and built environment affect the elements of the natural environment, the main characteristics of the hydrological cycle remain the same in urban areas but are significantly altered by urbanization impacts of the services to the urban population, such as water supply, drainage, and wastewater collection and management.

As a conceptual way of looking at water balances in urban areas, the context of the urban water cycle is a total systems approach of natural, human and institutional, and built environment systems (see Section 1.10 for more details). Water balances studies are generally conducted on a different time scale, depending on the type of applications in a planning horizon. Among the planning objectives, water has to be distributed to growing populations and communities should be prepare to cope with storms from extreme weather and climatic variability and potential climate change.

Wastewater collection and treatment with a biological operation unit (which is climate sensitive) plays an essential role in a city's daily operation with many external elements such as stormwater that could threaten its safe operation by causing sewer overflow. Along with water supply and distribution, these threefold water-related services constitute a valuable asset for a city. Assets that are often poorly managed with their state of operation and maintenance. They should be consciously evaluated and planned to face/reduce the risk of failures as the natural disasters are getting more frequent, the customer dependencies are higher, and there are growing interdependencies with other infrastructures. These systems can be simulated with different models such as data-driven models that are subject to input, parameters, and model structure uncertainties. The climate-induced hazards and the sheer size of water systems, which are subject to many interdependencies and uncertainties, have brought new paradigms to measure performance and a new metric for resource allocation. It is called resiliency. In a number of case studies, it is demonstrated how resiliency is being used as a new norm for performance evaluation. Finally, new imaging and digital/satellite data technologies combined with pattern recognition and its machine learning attributes have brought new opportunities for utilizing many environmental visualization techniques. These emerging issues and opportunities have been realized through applications such as water-related land use and landscape, water and soil interactions, and flood hazard mitigation in this book. In the remaining of this chapter, three distinct pillars for analysis, design, and planning are presented: urban water cycle and variability as the state of water being; landscape architecture as the medium for built by design; and total system as the planning approach.

Water governance is not discussed here as the focus of this book is more on tools and techniques and less on institutional and administrative aspects of water infrastructure management. There are so much variability on the past practices, politics, organizational structure, even cultural aspects of water governance that is too difficult and sometimes too impractical to find and prescribe a good governance model for a region. We should hope that through the exercise of sound analysis and planning of water systems described in this book, the regional evolution of water governance happens. See Chapter 2 of Karamouz et al. (2010) on the water governance.

1.2 Urban Water Cycle

The study of any phenomenon, process, and/or structure, such as climatic systems in urban areas or the urban water cycle, requires an integrated approach. The selected framework of study dictates the way an environment is dismantled for analysis. It also determines how to integrate the environmental components so that the analysis results can be incorporated holistically. For providing such a framework, an understanding of system concepts is needed.

Furthermore, the interactions and the variability in physical, chemical, and biological processes in and among urban system components need to be addressed. This understanding and knowledge can also be used to develop prediction and early warning systems widely used concerning the behavior of different components of the hydrologic cycle in general and urban water cycle in particular.

1.2.1 Components

Changes in the material and energy fluxes and the amount of precipitation, evaporation, and infiltration in urban areas result in changes in water cycle characteristics. The impacts of large urban areas on local microclimate have long been recognized and occurred due to changes in the energy regime such as air circulation patterns caused by buildings, transformation of land surfaces and land use planning, water transfer, waste generation, and air quality variations. These changes, which are depicted in Figure 1.1, can be summarized as follows:

FIGURE 1.1 Changes in natural process of the hydrologic cycle due to urbanization. (From Marsalek, J., Cisneros, B.J., Karamouz, M., Malmquist, P.A., Goldenfum, J.A., and Chocat, B.. Urban Water Cycle Processes and Interactions: Urban Water Series-UNESCO-IHP (Vol. 2). CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, (2008).)

• Land use: The transformation of undeveloped land into urban land, including transportation corridors
• Demand for water: Increased demand because of increased concentration of people and industries in urban and nearby suburban areas
• Increased entropy: The redundant use of unsustainable forms of energy
• Waste production: Substantial waste and industrial hazardous wastes and decreasing quality of different resources such as air, water, and soil
• Water and food transfer: Moved from other places to urban areas

1.2.2 Interdependencies

The urban water cycle may be depicted as a system on a watershed with varied land uses to show how it is impacted by external forces. The components and processes impacting this cycle are altered as a result of the interdependencies in such a watershed. These interdependencies in natural, biological, and constructed environments have ripple effects on the urban water cycle. Figure 1.2 demonstrates that as an overlay of four layers of: components; links and correlations (processes); interdependencies; and externalities. Externalities are costs and benefits that are passed down through the system as a result of the system's component interactions and anthropogenic activities. Furthermore, the urban water cycle as an open vapor/water/matter circulation system should be presented in a watershed scale and should be looked at as a hot spot as the temperature and pollution have intensified variations and impacts in urban regions.

FIGURE 1.2 Interdependencies in natural, biological, and constructed environments in urban watershed scale.

1.2.3 Impact of Urbanization

Physical, chemical, and biological impacts on the water cycle have caused severe and adverse depletion of water resources in many urban areas worldwide. Modifications of significant drainage canals from natural to human-made structures impact the runoff hydrograph that affects the rate of erosion and siltation. Pollutants such as hydrocarbon and other organic wastes, food waste, garbage, and other substances are carried by surface runoff. Discharging urban drainage into bodies of water causes a variety of harmful effects on the nearby environment, both short- and long-term. The magnitude of the impacts depends on factors such as the condition of the water body before the discharge occurs, its carrying capacity, and the quantity and distribution of rainfall, land use in the basin, and type and quantity of pollution transported. The problems cause esthetic changes as well as pollutions from toxic substances.

The soi...