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Integrated Urban Water Resources Management and Policy
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Integrated Urban Water Resources Management and Policy

A special issue of Resources (ISSN 2079-9276).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2019) | Viewed by 20611

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Evangelos Rozos

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Environmental Research & Sustainable Development, National Observatory of Athens, 15236 Athens, Greece
Interests: hydrology; water resources management; urban water cycle; hydroinformatics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Water adequacy is a sine qua non of civilization, and, for this reason, it is considered to be a non-excludable good. At the same time, water is a rivalrous (limited) resource which, combined with the previous definition, renders it a common-pool resource (CPR). The water supplied to urban settlements is usually called urban water. Urban water is expected to meet specific requirements, which presupposes careful governance. Governance includes tasks of policy-making and implementation processes. Policies include various decisions that form the framework of the provision of a good—a CPR, in the case of urban water. On the other hand, the implementation process includes all the required actions and procedures aimed at realizing a policy. It is evident that policy decisions and implementation procedures are interlaced and interactive. For example, water pricing influences the choice of resources that are used, the required system capacity, and the demand. This, in turn, influences the management of resources. Likewise, the tariff structure influences attitudes and efficiency, which, in turn, also influence the management of resources. Apparently, there is not only a great variety of factors involved in this sequence of interactions, but an extensive combination of influences also exists among them. The scope of this Special Issue comprises the study of the interactions involved in the policy-making and implementation procedures of urban water supply systems. This could include, for example, an integrated model based on optimization theory, systems theory, game theory, computational sociology, etc. or a holistic survey regarding the acceptability of solutions, public participation, habits, etc., and their influences on the system. The objective is to provide tools and knowledge that can help achieve better governance of the systems which supply this precious good to urban areas.

Dr. Evangelos Rozos
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Resources is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Urban water
  • Resources management
  • Water conservation
  • Decentralized technologies
  • Integrated modeling
  • Optimization
  • Socioeconomics
  • Dynamical systems
  • Policy-making
  • Decision support

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 2373 KiB  
Article
Machine Learning, Urban Water Resources Management and Operating Policy
by Evangelos Rozos
Resources 2019, 8(4), 173; https://doi.org/10.3390/resources8040173 - 14 Nov 2019
Cited by 29 | Viewed by 7183
Abstract
Meticulously analyzing all contemporaneous conditions and available options before taking operations decisions regarding the management of the urban water resources is a necessary step owing to water scarcity. More often than not, this analysis is challenging because of the uncertainty regarding inflows to [...] Read more.
Meticulously analyzing all contemporaneous conditions and available options before taking operations decisions regarding the management of the urban water resources is a necessary step owing to water scarcity. More often than not, this analysis is challenging because of the uncertainty regarding inflows to the system. The most common approach to account for this uncertainty is to combine the Bayesian decision theory with the dynamic programming optimization method. However, dynamic programming is plagued by the curse of dimensionality, that is, the complexity of the method is proportional to the number of discretized possible system states raised to the power of the number of reservoirs. Furthermore, classical statistics does not consistently represent the stochastic structure of the inflows (see persistence). To avoid these problems, this study will employ an appropriate stochastic model to produce synthetic time-series with long-term persistence, optimize the system employing a network flow programming modelling, and use the optimization results for training a feedforward neural network (FFN). This trained FFN alone can serve as a decision support tool that describes not only reservoir releases but also how to operate the entire water supply system. This methodology is applied in a simplified representation of the Athens water supply system, and the results suggest that the FFN is capable of successfully operating the system according to a predefined operating policy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrated Urban Water Resources Management and Policy)
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14 pages, 2258 KiB  
Article
Simulating the Hydrological Impact of Green Roof Use and an Increase in Green Areas in an Urban Catchment with i-Tree: A Case Study with the Town of Fontibón in Bogotá, Colombia
by David Bautista and Carlos Peña-Guzmán
Resources 2019, 8(2), 68; https://doi.org/10.3390/resources8020068 - 9 Apr 2019
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 5798
Abstract
Urbanization has produced various social, environmental, and hydrological impacts, such as reduced biodiversity, increased urban temperatures, ecosystem degradation, air and water pollution, changes to hydrological processes, groundwater recharge alterations, increased prevalence of floods, vegetation removal, and potential increases in unstable soils. Finding solutions [...] Read more.
Urbanization has produced various social, environmental, and hydrological impacts, such as reduced biodiversity, increased urban temperatures, ecosystem degradation, air and water pollution, changes to hydrological processes, groundwater recharge alterations, increased prevalence of floods, vegetation removal, and potential increases in unstable soils. Finding solutions to mitigate the impacts of urbanization is of vital importance in the development and planning of cities, and particularly so for developing countries. One strategy gaining momentum is the use of green roofs and larger green areas (greater green cover under trees, with the purpose of increasing the permeable area) for runoff control. In this study, a simulation was carried out using the i-Tree Hydro software that involved the urban basin in the Fontibón area of Bogotá, Colombia, with the aim of observing the hydrological benefits of trees, green areas, and permeable zones. Five scenarios were proposed in which green roof coverage was implemented (20% and 50% increases in green areas in Scenarios 1 and 2), coverage under existing trees was enhanced (50% and 100% increase in Scenarios 4 and 5), and finally a complete removal of green zones in Fontibón was simulated (Scenario 3). The town is relatively susceptible to a reduction in its existing green areas, with an increase in total flow of more than 50% for one scenario considered. Thus, an increase in the permeable coverage under trees (50% and 100% increased coverage under existing trees) provided the best strategy for mitigating the impacts of urbanization by reducing the total, maximum, and average impervious flow by 3%, 4%, and 8%, respectively. Finally, an increase in permeable zones corresponding to plants was proposed via the implementation of green roofs. However, this strategy showed a response to the reduction in the lowest total flow at 1%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrated Urban Water Resources Management and Policy)
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15 pages, 1167 KiB  
Article
Urban Water Security Assessment Using an Integrated Metabolism Approach—Case Study of the National Capital Territory of Delhi in India
by Ruchira Ghosh, Arun Kansal and G Venkatesh
Resources 2019, 8(2), 62; https://doi.org/10.3390/resources8020062 - 3 Apr 2019
Cited by 24 | Viewed by 7002
Abstract
Water is a non substitutable resource and a social good, which governments must perforce provide to its citizens in the right quantity and quality. An integrated urban metabolism model is useful in understanding the status quo of an urban water and sanitation system. [...] Read more.
Water is a non substitutable resource and a social good, which governments must perforce provide to its citizens in the right quantity and quality. An integrated urban metabolism model is useful in understanding the status quo of an urban water and sanitation system. By defining and measuring the values of relevant hydrological performance indicators—deliverables of the model referred to—a thorough knowledge of the present performance and the gaps, which need to be plugged en route to a sustainable urban water infrastructure, can be obtained, as demonstrated in this paper. This then forms the bedrock for decision-making and policy formulation for change to be introduced top-down as well as advice, which would enable the much needed bottom-up support to policies. The authors have chosen Delhi as the case study city, but would like to point out that this application can be reproduced for any other town/city/region of the world. The water balance within the chosen system boundaries shows that the annual unutilized flows, amounting to 1443 million cubic meters, dominate the metabolic flows of water in Delhi, and the annual groundwater withdrawal, which exceeds 420 million cubic meters, is much greater than the recharge rate, resulting in a rapid depletion of the groundwater level. There is an urgent need thereby to improve the rate of infiltration of stormwater and reduce the rate of runoff by focusing on increasing the share of permeable surfaces in the city, as well as to consider the wastewater streams as potential sources of water, while not forgetting demand side of management measures, as the pressure on the urban water system in the city is likely to intensify with a combination of population growth, economic development, and climate change in the near future. The recommendations provided by the authors towards the end of the article, can, if suitable measures are undertaken and robust policies are implemented, result in Delhi’s enjoying a water surplus in the short term, and progressively attain complete sustainability with regard to the utilization of its water resources. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrated Urban Water Resources Management and Policy)
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