Adoption of increasing block tariffs (IBTs) among urban water utilities in major cities in China

Increasing block tariffs (IBTs) have been officially endorsed by the Chinese government since 1998, but by the end of 2013, fewer than half of the country’s 36 major cities had adopted IBTs as the tariff structure for their water utilities. Our study examines the main factors affecting these cities’ decisions on whether or not to adopt IBTs, considering both general characteristics of the cities and characteristics of their water utilities. A discrete-time hazard model is used for empirical analysis. Results show that factors most likely to affect a major city’s decision on IBT adoption include the city’s economic development as measured by growth rate of GDP; changes in the relative importance of the domestic water sector; the city’s wastewater treatment rate and leakage rate; and business structure of the water utility.     

Effect of urban sprawl on a traditional water system (qanat) in the City of Mashhad,NE Iran

The qanat is one of the traditional water supply systems in semi-arid zones. Today, this sustainable system is under threat from various modern phenomena. Urban sprawl is the most salient factor, which poses a major threat to these water systems (qanats). This study endeavors to explore the effect of urban expansion on the qanat fields as well as the difficulties encountered at city construction and water system junctions in the northeastern city of Mashhad, in Iran. Data analysis reveals that rapid urbanization as well as uncontrolled urban expansion has led to the intersection of city construction and qanats; especially during the last few decades. This phenomenon has resulted in the destruction of 88 qanat fields, water shortage in the city of Mashhad, and the substitution of this sustainable and environment-friendly system with alternative unsustainable water systems such as dams and wells.     

Membrane assisted technology appraisal for water reuse applications in South Africa

Water scarcity, pertaining to many interrelated issues e.g. rapid urbanisation and increasing water pollution, has been acknowledged around the world. Water reuse has emerged as a viable water conservation measure to satisfy water demand in many communities. Among the diversity of wastewater treatment processes, membrane assisted treatment technologies have been employed for different water reuse scenarios. In this regard, one of the most critical problems is how to select an appropriate membrane technology for a water reuse scenario. This research therefore develops a decision making framework for selection of wastewater treatment technology. The framework is applied to different non-potable reuse scenarios in South African cities and suburban areas by employing a multi criteria analysis method. The results show that this approach is able to provide a systematic and rigorous analysis which can help in comparing and selecting wastewater technologies.     

Comparison of UV-Cl and UV-H2O2 advanced oxidation processes in the degradation of contaminants from water and wastewater: A review

Applications of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) in water and wastewater treatment have been the subject of growing interest throughout the last decade. Although UV/hydrogen peroxide (UV-H₂O₂) is the most established technology among the UV-AOPs, UV-chlorine (UV-Cl) is emerging as a reliable and potentially more cost-effective alternative. Recent studies have indicated that UV-Cl processes may be more efficient and economically favourable for the degradation of some chemicals of emerging concern from contaminated water. Moreover, in terms of the formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs), UV-H₂O₂ seems to have no superiority over UV-Cl. This said, more investigation in the assessment of genotoxicity and cytotoxicity of DBPs is required. Additionally, more pilot-scale and full-scale studies are required to establish UV-Cl as a reliable alternative to UV- H₂O₂. This paper compares UV-Cl and UV-H₂O₂ AOPs for the degradation of intractable chemicals from water and wastewater based on the practical considerations of efficiency, cost, DBP formation, kinetics and sensitivity to water matrix variability. Finally, various modelling approaches to UV-Cl have been reviewed. This review showed that UV-Cl is superior to UV-H₂O₂ in terms of degradation efficiency and cost effectiveness and can be a robust alternative in many UV-AOPs applications.     

New Socio-ecological Imperatives for Cities: Possibilities and Dilemmas for Australian Metropolitan Governance

This review examines two new socio-ecological imperatives that have the potential to reshape planning practice and policy: urban climate governance and governance for resilience. The roots of the new imperatives lie in international city collaborative networks funded by philanthropy organisations that operate at city scale. City networks operating at the metropolitan scale raise issues for Australian cities with distributed governance. This practice review considers the early manifestation of both imperatives in what might be termed ‘policy experiments’ in Australia’s two largest cities: the new climate governance framework emerging through the City of Sydney’s collaboration with the C40 network and the resilience regime being shaped by the City of Melbourne’s partnership with Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient 100 program. Whilst our early analysis has accentuated the positive to some degree, pointing to different, if preliminary, forms of success in both Sydney and Melbourne, the limits and frustrations that present in both contexts cannot be discounted. Urban planners in many world cities and regions will need to consider and possibly absorb these new agendas of urban climate governance and governing for resilience driven by international city collaborative networks.     

The long-term reform of the water and wastewater industry: The case of Melbourne in Australia

Since the 1980s, one of the most important parts of Australian microeconomic reform has been the restructuring of the country’s government owned utilities - including water supply and wastewater disposal. This process was encouraged by the perception that the state owned authorities performed poorly in the 1970s and 1980s. This paper analyses economic performance of the Melbourne water and wastewater industry from the early 1970s. Over the longer term, the industry has improved its economic performance in terms of productivity and returns to the shareholder, however, consumers have not substantially benefited from this process in terms of lower prices.     

Modeling water use in schools: A disaggregation approach

Modeling urban water use plays a key role in water resource planning and management. From the literature it was found that a vast amount of research has been conducted on modeling residential water use and limited attention has been given to modeling non-residential urban water use. However, it has significant importance for effective water resources management in any urban area. This study aims to model urban water use in schools in the eastern part of Melbourne. A total number of 375 schools were considered in this study. These schools were first grouped into different categories based on the annual volume of water use. Multiple Linear Regression models were then developed for each of these groups. Model performance was measured using the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (E). It was found that the developed models have the capacity to estimate water use in schools satisfactorily, achieving E values greater than 0.5 in most cases.     

Infrastructure epistemologies: water,wastewater and displaced persons in Germany

Recent years have seen historically unprecedented global disaster migration; in 2016 Germany received 1.3 million displaced individuals. Regardless of past resources and future potential, disaster migrants are a new, vulnerable population. This new population increases demand for water and wastewater infrastructure services, despite being temporarily unable to pay for services. As such, this kind of sudden population increase is a resiliency challenge for the receiving infrastructure systems. Qualitative analysis of 1,884 open-ended survey responses was blended with a statistical analysis to discover how and why the German public perceives water and sanitation services have been provided to the disaster migrants. Unprompted, 36% (112/314) of respondents referenced at least one of three infrastructure epistemologies, including water and wastewater as a service, as a basic need, and as a human right. These epistemologies share statistically significant relationships with how long respondents feel water and wastewater should be provided to displaced persons. A temporally limited, normative perception of water and sanitation as a humanitarian good functions to enable water and wastewater infrastructure to deliver a high level of service despite the significant disruption of the large and vulnerable population influx, and has practical implications for the structure of cost recovery.     

上海新城镇生态景观河道：临港新城书院镇黄华港构建措施

临港新城面临大规模的城镇化发展,而其河道生态系统存在自身脆弱性、水生植物严重缺失、污染负荷的增加使水体富营养化趋势明显等状况,故新城镇河道生态化治理不能照搬中心城区的模式。以黄华港为例,从生态护岸的构建和水生植物的重建与恢复、兼岸线改造与亲水功能等角度,论述上海中小型河道生态景观的构建模式和应用措施。     

Productivity and efficiency in the water industry

Over the past twenty years there has been increasing interest in the productivity and efficiency of, and the optimal structures for, the water supply and wastewater industries. In part this interest has manifested itself in the increased use of numerous statistical techniques to determine the productivity and efficiency of the water sector in a variety of countries. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First it briefly reviews the various measures that have been used to gauge the levels of productivity and efficiency in the water sector, with particular reference to input and output data requirements of these measures. Second it summarises the key structural findings that have been determined from this research, particularly with respect to economies of scale and scope, public versus private ownership and the impact of regulation. Third, it considers potential areas for potential future research, such as the effect of environmental management activities (including water conservation) and regulation on productivity and efficiency, the role of wastewater as a potential source of potable or ‘fit-for-purpose’ water and the relationship between water supply and urban planning.     

A technical decision-making framework: stormwater as an alternative supply source

Stormwater harvesting is a relatively new concept which has developed using traditional stormwater management practices as well as water resourcing and holistic water management concepts. While stormwater harvesting systems have been designed and constructed in the past, the planning and design processes have not followed an integrated approach. This paper addresses this issue and describes a decision-making framework (DMF) that determines the most appropriate stormwater harvesting scheme option based primarily on technical feasibility and financial costs with a focus on neighbourhood-scale development. A case study of an existing urban area in the suburb of Sunshine in Melbourne, Australia, was conducted to demonstrate the DMF. Comparison of all stormwater harvesting scheme options determined that while one scheme option was the most effective option in terms of cost, reliability, quantity of stormwater used and end uses met, several other options could also be examined further for detailed analysis.     

Toronto: Paradigm Reexamined

There is currently a debate about the extent to which Toronto can serve as a model for transport and land-use planning policies in Australian cities. Proponents of the ‘Toronto model’ argue that the city has achieved high rates of public transport patronage through a combination of policies including the integration of transport and land-use planning. Much of the debate turns on definitional arguments about ways of measuring public transport patronage, population density and other relevant factors. This paper reviews the evidence, using consistent and rigorous definitions, and compares Toronto with Melbourne. It concludes that Toronto is indeed a model of successful public transport, with a relatively high trip-making rate that has been maintained over many decades. It also concludes, however, that this success relative to Melbourne is not explained by land-use patterns. The differences in population density and distribution between the two cities are smaller than previously thought, and the differences that do exist do not correlate with the differences in transport patterns.     

SmartRoads: tracing the limits of managing road space at the metropolitan road network scale

The task of (re)allocating existing road space has been pushed to the fore in traffic management. In Melbourne, Australia, the rise of “network operating planning” indicates renewed vigour for planners to wrestle with the challenge of managing road space at the network level—highlighted by the creation of SmartRoads. Tracing this and prior frameworks in Melbourne’s history reveals recurrent issues related to governance, cyclical debates, poor continuity and competing priorities. The issues collectively speak to a tension common in the road space allocation task: accounting for finer-grained road space use details and acknowledging small changes have network level implications. Although playing out differently depending on city, engaging the tension is central to making better informed road space allocation decisions.     

Optimization of the coagulation-flocculation process for pulp mill wastewater treatment using a combination of uniform design and response surface methodology

Pulp mill wastewater was treated using the coagulation-flocculation process with aluminum chloride as the coagulant and a modified natural polymer, starch-g-PAM-g-PDMC [polyacrylamide and poly (2-methacryloyloxyethyl) trimethyl ammonium chloride], as the flocculant. A novel approach with a combination of response surface methodology (RSM) and uniform design (UD) was employed to evaluate the effects and interactions of three main influential factors, coagulant dosage, flocculant dosage and pH, on the treatment efficiency in terms of the supernatant turbidity and lignin removals as well as the water recovery. The optimal conditions obtained from the compromise of the three desirable responses, supernatant turbidity removal, lignin removal and water recovery efficiency, were as follows: coagulant dosage of 871 mg/L, flocculant dosage of 22.3 mg/L and pH 8.35. Confirmation experiments demonstrated that such a combination of the UD and RSM is a powerful and useful approach for optimizing the coagulation-flocculation process for the pulp mill wastewater treatment.     

诗情画意——南京重要城市轮廓线研究解析

城市轮廓线是以建筑、树木,山峦等各种城市实体元素以天空为背景呈现出的叠加效果,具有空间识别、形象展现、文化记忆等多种功能。文章通过对南京诸多重要城市轮廓线的解读,归纳其＂山、水、城、林＂四种不同的类别,并分别针对类别特点,选取典型轮廓案例进行分析,提出未来控制与优化的措施。     

Modelling the urban water chain: Incentives and cost recovery in wastewater treatment in developing countries

To improve surface water quality in developing countries new approaches to design wastewater treatment schemes have been developed. We identify a compliance problem in these schemes which threatens their success. To analyze this problem, we integrate a compliance game into a model of the urban water chain. We illustrate the model with a numerical example on small scale leather processing. We find that the compliance problem indeed threatens the overall success of the treatment scheme and show under which conditions this is so. With an empirical calibration our model is a ready to use tool to provide quantitative results that can inform planners of urban wastewater treatment schemes.     

墨尔本环境规划——对一体化水资源管理政策的批判性分析

本文概述了墨尔本城市规划政策中的环境因素,重点研究了其中的可持续水管理政策。对于严重缺水的圣尔本市而言,可持续的水管理政策是一个非常重要的问题。圣尔本的水量储备在过去10年里已经枯竭,同时气候变化的预测也表明其面临的缺水压力将日益严峻。这导致了激进的管理战略,例如限制本州某些地区的非必要用水。不单单是圣尔本,在澳大利亚乃至全世界其他很多地区都面临着缺水这样的问题。专门用于水管理的较长期的规划政策有助于解决这些问题并降低其进一步的影响。2006年10月引入维多利亚规划条例（VPPs）的“一体化水资源管理”（integrated water management）规定在新的细分条例中可能有助于使其转向更加可持续的供水和污水处理系统。本文介绍了“一体化水资源管理”政策,并对其进行了批判性分析,批判的中心主题是自由裁量与规制的发展控制之间的利弊。文献表明,这一政策的任意性将降低目标达成的可能性。因此,本文认为这一政策要想获得更大的成功,就应该更具规制性和创新性。最后本文探讨了在世界其他地区这类规定的适用性和有效性。     

Place-Making in Megaprojects in Melbourne

This article analyses state-led place-making practices in Melbourne. The two levels of government that influence planning in Melbourne make much of the city as ‘culturally vibrant’ and ‘creative’, and have incorporated creative city-inspired place-making principles into many layers of the planning system. An examination of the development of two mixed-use megaprojects in central Melbourne reveals however that ideals of culturally engaging public places, and indeed of creative landscapes for middle-class consumption, wither in the face of more basic imperatives for economic development. In these case studies the ‘creative city’, no matter how the idea is interpreted, has little traction either as a set of inclusive place-making principles or as a gentrification strategy. The article concludes that the creative city-inspired place-making objectives in the planning system at both state and local levels are ambiguous in their overall intents and completely unsupported by statutory controls. Such place-making objectives as are realised are the compromised results of the interplay of uncoordinated decisions, delivered at the pleasure of the developer.     

可持续的水与污水处理前沿技术

传统水与污水处理方式由于未充分考虑资源、能源回收与利用而日显弊端。在可持续发展的大背景下，视污水及水处理过程中产生的废物为资源与能源载体的可持续水与污水处理技术之理念在全球范围内普遍受到追捧。基于2008年6月在瑞士苏黎世召开的第五届国际水协（IWA）“前沿技术”（LET2008）国际会议专家观点、技术与结论，介绍水与污水中新出现的微污染物及其相应去除技术，综述在可持续理念下的水回用、能源转化及磷回收等技术的最新研发进展。     

Electrocoagulation of potable water

Coagulation caused by electrolytically produced ions (electrocoagulation) followed by filtration has been studied as a possible alternative to the conventional coagulation process. Electrochemical processes have been used in water and wastewater treatment since 1887. Electrocoagulation is looked upon as an interesting process in use at small water treatment plants. There are several important design aspects of this process which deserve further study.This study presents results showing the correlation between the current density and the aluminium dosing and provides results showing the necessary overpotential. The process has proved efficient with regard to removal of aquatic humus. A comparison of this method with conventional coagulation shows that the aquatic humus is removed equally well with both methods.Conventionally coagulated water (using alum) contains higher concentrations of sulphate and thus has a higher specific conductivity than the electrochemically treated water. The electrochemically treated water contains higher residual aluminium concentrations than the conventionally treated water due to the higher pH values.