When does infrastructure hybridisation outperform centralised infrastructure paradigms? - Exploring economic and hydraulic impacts of decentralised urban wastewater system expansion.

We explore the dynamics of centralised and decentralised wastewater infrastructure across various scenarios and introduce novel insights into their performance regarding structural vulnerability, hydraulic capacity, and costs. This study determines circumstances under which infrastructure hybridisation outperforms traditional centralised infrastructure paradigms. We combined system analysis to map out the modelling problem with the model-based exploration of the transition space using the novel TURN-Sewers model. System diagramming was used to identify the parameters or combinations of parameters that significantly influence the performance indicators being assessed. This allowed the creation of relevant simulation scenarios to identify circumstances where a decentralised sewer system could outperform a centralised one. TURN-Sewers was applied to model the infrastructure maintenance and generation of new infrastructure over 20 years for a municipality on the Swiss Plateau, considering a population growth rate of 0.03 a-1. Results show that decentralisation in expansion areas with higher densification can outperform the hydraulic performance and structural vulnerability of expanding centralised sanitary wastewater infrastructure. Decentralised systems can also offer economic advantages when capital expenditure costs for small-scale wastewater treatment plants are significantly reduced compared to current costs, particularly at higher discount rates, e.g. reaping effects of economies of scale. The findings of this study emphasise the potential of transition pathways towards decentralisation in urban water infrastructures and the value of models that allow the exploration of this transition space.

A review of serious games for urban water management decisions: current gaps and future research directions.

Urban water management (UWM) is a complex problem characterized by multiple alternatives, conflicting objectives, and multiple uncertainties about key drivers like climate change, population growth, and increasing urbanization. Serious games are becoming a popular means to support decision-makers who are responsible for the planning and management of urban water systems. This is evident in the increasing number of articles about serious games in recent years. However, the effectiveness of these games in improving decision-making and the quality of their design and evaluation approaches remains unclear. To understand this better, in this paper, we identified 41 serious games covering the urban water cycle. Of these games, 15 were shortlisted for a detailed review. By using common rational decision-making and game design phases from literature, we evaluated and mapped how the shortlisted games contribute to these phases. Our research shows that current serious game applications have multiple limitations: lack of focus on executing the initial phases of decision-making, limited use of storytelling and adaptive game elements, use of low-quality evaluation design and explicit indicators to measure game outcomes, and lastly, lack of attention to cognitive processes of players playing the game. Addressing these limitations is critical for advancing purposeful game design supporting UWM.

A Simplified Sanitary Sewer System Generator for Exploratory Modelling at City-Scale.

Future climatic, demographic, technological, urban and socio-economic challenges call for more flexible and sustainable wastewater infrastructure systems. Exploratory modelling can help to investigate the consequences of these developments on the infrastructure. In order to explore large numbers of adaptation strategies, we need to re-balance the degree of realism of sewer network and ability to reflect key performance characteristics against the model's parsimony and computational efficiency. We present a spatially explicit algorithm for creating sanitary sewer networks that realistically represent key characteristics of a real system. Basic topographic, demographic and urban characteristics are abstracted into a squared grid of 'Blocks' which are the foundation for the sewer network's topology delineation. We compare three different pipe dimensioning approaches and found a good balance between detail and computational efficiency. With a basic hydraulic performance assessment, we demonstrate that we attain a computationally efficient and high-fidelity wastewater sewer network with adequate hydraulic performance. A spatial resolution of 250 m Block size in combination with a sequential Pipe-by-Pipe (PBP) design algorithm provides a sound trade-off between computational time and fidelity of relevant structural and hydraulic properties for exploratory modelling. We can generate a simplified sewer network (both topology and hydraulic design) in 18 s using PBP, versus 36 min using a highly detailed model or 1 s using a highly abstract model. Moreover, this simplification can cut up to 1/10th to 1/50th the computational time for the hydraulic simulations depending on the routing method implemented. We anticipate our model to be a starting point for sophisticated exploratory modelling into possible infrastructure adaptation measures of topological and loading changes of sewer systems for long-term planning.

Model development for evidence-based prioritisation of policy action on emerging chemical and microbial drinking water risks.

While the burden of disease from well-studied drinking water contaminants is declining, risks from emerging chemical and microbial contaminants arise because of social, technological, demographic and climatological developments. At present, emerging chemical and microbial drinking water contaminants are not assessed in a systematic way, but reactively and incidence based. Furthermore, they are assessed separately despite similar pollution sources. As a result, risks might be addressed ineffectively. Integrated risk assessment approaches are thus needed that elucidate the uncertainties in the risk evaluation of emerging drinking water contaminants, while considering risk assessors' values. This study therefore aimed to (1) construct an assessment hierarchy for the integrated evaluation of the potential risks from emerging chemical and microbial contaminants in drinking water and (2) develop a decision support tool, based on the agreed assessment hierarchy, to quantify (uncertain) risk scores. A multi-actor approach was used to construct the assessment hierarchy, involving chemical and microbial risk assessors, drinking water experts and members of responsible authorities. The concept of value-focused thinking was applied to guide the problem-structuring and model-building process. The development of the decision support tool was done using Decisi-o-rama, an open-source Python library. With the developed decision support tool (uncertain) risk scores can be calculated for emerging chemical and microbial drinking water contaminants, which can be used for the evidence-based prioritisation of actions on emerging chemical and microbial drinking water risks. The decision support tool improves existing prioritisation approaches as it combines uncertain indicator levels with a multi-stakeholder approach and integrated the risk assessment of chemical and microbial contaminants. By applying the concept of value-focused thinking, this study addressed difficulties in evidence-based decision-making related to emerging drinking water contaminants. Suggestions to improve the model were made to guide future research in assisting policy makers to effectively protect public health from emerging drinking water risks.

A Research Agenda for the Future of Urban Water Management: Exploring the Potential of Nongrid, Small-Grid, and Hybrid Solutions.

Recent developments in high- and middle-income countries have exhibited a shift from conventional urban water systems to alternative solutions that are more diverse in source separation, decentralization, and modularization. These solutions include nongrid, small-grid, and hybrid systems to address such pressing global challenges as climate change, eutrophication, and rapid urbanization. They close loops, recover valuable resources, and adapt quickly to changing boundary conditions such as population size. Moving to such alternative solutions requires both technical and social innovations to coevolve over time into integrated socio-technical urban water systems. Current implementations of alternative systems in high- and middle-income countries are promising, but they also underline the need for research questions to be addressed from technical, social, and transformative perspectives. Future research should pursue a transdisciplinary research approach to generating evidence through socio-technical "lighthouse" projects that apply alternative urban water systems at scale. Such research should leverage experiences from these projects in diverse socio-economic contexts, identify their potentials and limitations from an integrated perspective, and share their successes and failures across the urban water sector.

Comparing multi-criteria decision analysis and integrated assessment to support long-term water supply planning.

We compare the use of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)-or more precisely, models used in multi-attribute value theory (MAVT)-to integrated assessment (IA) models for supporting long-term water supply planning in a small town case study in Switzerland. They are used to evaluate thirteen system scale water supply alternatives in four future scenarios regarding forty-four objectives, covering technical, social, environmental, and economic aspects. The alternatives encompass both conventional and unconventional solutions and differ regarding technical, spatial and organizational characteristics. This paper focuses on the impact assessment and final evaluation step of the structured MCDA decision support process. We analyze the performance of the alternatives for ten stakeholders. We demonstrate the implications of model assumptions by comparing two IA and three MAVT evaluation model layouts of different complexity. For this comparison, we focus on the validity (ranking stability), desirability (value), and distinguishability (value range) of the alternatives given the five model layouts. These layouts exclude or include stakeholder preferences and uncertainties. Even though all five led us to identify the same best alternatives, they did not produce identical rankings. We found that the MAVT-type models provide higher distinguishability and a more robust basis for discussion than the IA-type models. The needed complexity of the model, however, should be determined based on the intended use of the model within the decision support process. The best-performing alternatives had consistently strong performance for all stakeholders and future scenarios, whereas the current water supply system was outperformed in all evaluation layouts. The best-performing alternatives comprise proactive pipe rehabilitation, adapted firefighting provisions, and decentralized water storage and/or treatment. We present recommendations for possible ways of improving water supply planning in the case study and beyond.

Statistical failure models for water distribution pipes - A review from a unified perspective.

This review describes and compares statistical failure models for water distribution pipes in a systematic way and from a unified perspective. The way the comparison is structured provides the information needed by scientists and practitioners to choose a suitable failure model for their specific needs. The models are presented in a novel framework consisting of: 1) Clarification of model assumptions. The models originally formulated in different mathematical forms are all presented as failure rate. This enables to see differences and similarities across the models. Furthermore, we present a new conceptual failure rate that an optimal model would represent and to which the failure rate of each model can be compared. 2) Specification of the detailed data assumptions required for unbiased model calibration covering the structure and completeness of the data. 3) Presentation of the different types of probabilistic predictions available for each model. Nine different models and their variations or further developments are presented in this review. For every model an overview of its applications published in scientific journals and the available software implementations is provided. The unified view provides guidance to model selection. Furthermore, the model comparison presented herein enables to identify areas where further research is needed.

Strategic rehabilitation planning of piped water networks using multi-criteria decision analysis.

To overcome the difficulties of strategic asset management of water distribution networks, a pipe failure and a rehabilitation model are combined to predict the long-term performance of rehabilitation strategies. Bayesian parameter estimation is performed to calibrate the failure and replacement model based on a prior distribution inferred from three large water utilities in Switzerland. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and scenario planning build the framework for evaluating 18 strategic rehabilitation alternatives under future uncertainty. Outcomes for three fundamental objectives (low costs, high reliability, and high intergenerational equity) are assessed. Exploitation of stochastic dominance concepts helps to identify twelve non-dominated alternatives and local sensitivity analysis of stakeholder preferences is used to rank them under four scenarios. Strategies with annual replacement of 1.5-2% of the network perform reasonably well under all scenarios. In contrast, the commonly used reactive replacement is not recommendable unless cost is the only relevant objective. Exemplified for a small Swiss water utility, this approach can readily be adapted to support strategic asset management for any utility size and based on objectives and preferences that matter to the respective decision makers.

Extension of pipe failure models to consider the absence of data from replaced pipes.

Predictions of the expected number of failures of water distribution network pipes are important to develop an optimal management strategy. A number of probabilistic pipe failure models have been proposed in the literature for this purpose. They have to be calibrated on failure records. However, common data management practices mean that replaced pipes are often absent from available data sets. This leads to a 'survival selection bias', as pipes with frequent failures are more likely to be absent from the data. To address this problem, we propose a formal statistical approach to extend the likelihood function of a pipe failure model by a replacement model. Frequentist maximum likelihood estimation or Bayesian inference can then be applied for parameter estimation. This approach is general and is not limited to a particular failure or replacement model. We implemented this approach with a Weibull-exponential failure model and a simple constant probability replacement model. Based on this distribution assumptions, we illustrated our concept with two examples. First, we used simulated data to show how replacement causes a 'survival selection bias' and how to successfully correct for it. A second example with real data illustrates how a model can be extended to consider covariables.