Managing the complete Urban Water Cycle: the Urban Water Optioneering Tool

C. Makropoulos, and E. Rozos, Managing the complete Urban Water Cycle: the Urban Water Optioneering Tool, SWITCH, Paris, France, 2011.

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[English]

Conventional urban water management practices aim to meet water demands while conveying wastewater and stormwater away from urban settings. However, increasing water scarcity, caused by either changes in climatic conditions, increasing consumption, or both, has drawn attention to the possibility of re-engineering the urban water cycle to implement water recycling and reuse practices (Makropoulos et al., 2006). Examples of these new practices are the use of treated greywater (or “greenwater”) or harvested rainwater for a variety of non-potable water uses in the household. The successful design of water recycling schemes should attempt to minimize (simultaneously) the demands for potable water, the energy and cost, and perform adequately in the longer term – possibly even under changing climatic conditions. This paper describes the Urban Water Optioneering Tool (UWOT; Makropoulos et al., 2008), which is a decision support tool that supports the design of the complete (integrated) urban water cycle and helps to achieve sustainable water management for new and existing urban areas and explores both past applications and future developments within the context of new challenges for water in Europe.

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