Title

Optimal expansion of a drinking water infrastructure system with respect to carbon footprint, cost-effectiveness and water demand

Authors

Authors

N. B. Chang; C. Qi;Y. J. Yang

Comments

Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Environ. Manage.

Keywords

Water supply; Multiobjective programming; Systems analysis; Regionalization; Carbon footprint; Adaptive water resources management; LIFE-CYCLE ASSESSMENT; SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT; CAPACITY EXPANSION; MANAGEMENT; INDICATORS; FRAMEWORK; AGRICULTURE; Environmental Sciences

Abstract

Urban water infrastructure expansion requires careful long-term planning to reduce the risk from climate change during periods of both economic boom and recession. As part of the adaptation management strategies, capacity expansion in concert with other management alternatives responding to the population dynamics, ecological conservation, and water management policies should be systematically examined to balance the water supply and demand temporally and spatially with different scales. To mitigate the climate change impact, this practical implementation often requires a multiobjective decision analysis that introduces economic efficiencies and carbon-footprint matrices simultaneously. The optimal expansion strategies for a typical water infrastructure system in South Florida demonstrate the essence of the new philosophy. Within our case study, the multiobjective modeling framework uniquely features an integrated evaluation of transboundary surface and groundwater resources and quantitatively assesses the interdependencies among drinking water supply, wastewater reuse, and irrigation water permit transfer as the management options expand throughout varying dimensions. With the aid of a multistage planning methodology over the partitioned time horizon, such a systems analysis has resulted in a full-scale screening and sequencing of multiple competing objectives across a suite of management strategies. These strategies that prioritize 20 options provide a possible expansion schedule over the next 20 years that improve water infrastructure resilience and at low life-cycle costs. The proposed method is transformative to other applications of similar water infrastructure systems elsewhere in the world. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Journal of Environmental Management

Volume

110

Publication Date

1-1-2012

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

194

Last Page

206

WOS Identifier

WOS:000309486700021

ISSN

0301-4797

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