Modelling and monitoring of integrated urban wastewater systems: review on status and perspectives

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (6) ◽  
pp. 1203-1215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Benedetti ◽  
Jeroen Langeveld ◽  
Adrien Comeau ◽  
Lluís Corominas ◽  
Glen Daigger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Systems Analysis ◽  
Integrated Management ◽  
Treatment Plant ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
Integrated Modelling ◽  
Water Quantity ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Integrated Models ◽  
Urban Wastewater ◽  
Wastewater Systems

While the general principles and modelling approaches for integrated management/modelling of urban water systems already present a decade ago still hold, in recent years aspects like model interfacing and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) influent generation as complements to sewer modelling have been investigated and several new or improved systems analysis methods have become available. New/improved software tools coupled with the current high computational capacity have enabled the application of integrated modelling to several practical cases, and advancements in monitoring water quantity and quality have been substantial and now allow the collecting of data in sufficient quality and quantity to permit using integrated models for real-time applications too. Further developments are warranted in the field of data quality assurance and efficient maintenance.

Systems analysis of urban wastewater systems – two systematic approaches to analyse a complex system

2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (12) ◽  
pp. 171-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Benedetti ◽  
F. Blumensaat ◽  
G. Bönisch ◽  
G. Dirckx ◽  
N. Jardin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
River Basin ◽  
Systems Analysis ◽  
Scale Dependency ◽  
Urban Wastewater ◽  
Critical Pathways ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
River Stretch ◽  
Basin Scale ◽  
Wastewater Systems ◽  
Receiving Water

This work was aimed at performing an analysis of the integrated urban wastewater system (catchment area, sewer, WWTP, receiving water). It focused on analysing the substance fluxes going through the system to identify critical pathways of pollution, as well as assessing the effectiveness of energy consumption and operational/capital costs. Two different approaches were adopted in the study to analyse urban wastewater systems of diverse characteristics. In the first approach a wide ranged analysis of a system at river basin scale is applied. The Nete river basin in Belgium, a tributary of the Schelde, was analysed through the 29 sewer catchments constituting the basin. In the second approach a more detailed methodology was developed to separately analyse two urban wastewater systems situated within the Ruhr basin (Germany) on a river stretch scale. The paper mainly focuses on the description of the method applied. Only the most important results are presented. The main outcomes of these studies are: the identification of stressors on the receiving water bodies, an extensive benchmarking of wastewater systems, and the evidence of the scale dependency of results in such studies.

Cost-effective solutions for water quality improvement in the Dommel River supported by sewer–WWTP–river integrated modelling

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 965-973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Benedetti ◽  
Jeroen Langeveld ◽  
Arjen F. van Nieuwenhuijzen ◽  
Jarno de Jonge ◽  
Jeroen de Klein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Control Strategies ◽  
Treatment Plant ◽  
Water System ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Integrated Modelling ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Urban Wastewater ◽  
Real Time Control ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
The Impact

This project aims at finding cost-efficient sets of measures to meet the Water Framework Directive (WFD) derived goals for the Dommel River (The Netherlands). Within the project, both acute and long-term impacts of the urban wastewater system on the chemical and ecological quality of the river are studied with a monitoring campaign in the urban wastewater system (wastewater treatment plant and sewers) and in the receiving surface water system. An integrated model, which proved to be a powerful tool to analyse the interactions within the integrated urban wastewater system, was first used to evaluate measures in the urban wastewater system using the existing infrastructure and new real-time control strategies. As the latter resulted to be beneficial but not sufficient, this paper investigated the use of additional infrastructural measures to improve the system cost-effectively and have it meet the Directive's goals. Finally, an uncertainty analysis was conducted to investigate the impact of uncertainty in the main model assumptions and model parameters on the performance robustness of the selected set of measures. Apart from some extreme worst-case scenarios, the proposed set of measures turned out to be sufficiently robust. Due to the substantial savings obtained with the results of this project, the pay-back time of the whole monitoring and modelling work proved to be less than 5 months. This illustrates the power of mathematical modelling for decision support in the context of complex urban water systems.

On data requirements for calibration of integrated models for urban water systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 728-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Langeveld ◽  
Ingmar Nopens ◽  
Remy Schilperoort ◽  
Lorenzo Benedetti ◽  
Jeroen de Klein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
Integrated Modeling ◽  
Monitoring Data ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Integrated Models ◽  
Widespread Application ◽  
Urban Water Systems ◽  
Data Requirements

Modeling of integrated urban water systems (IUWS) has seen a rapid development in recent years. Models and software are available that describe the process dynamics in sewers, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), receiving water systems as well as at the interfaces between the submodels. Successful applications of integrated modeling are, however, relatively scarce. One of the reasons for this is the lack of high-quality monitoring data with the required spatial and temporal resolution and accuracy to calibrate and validate the integrated models, even though the state of the art of monitoring itself is no longer the limiting factor. This paper discusses the efforts to be able to meet the data requirements associated with integrated modeling and describes the methods applied to validate the monitoring data and to use submodels as software sensor to provide the necessary input for other submodels. The main conclusion of the paper is that state of the art monitoring is in principle sufficient to provide the data necessary to calibrate integrated models, but practical limitations resulting in incomplete data-sets hamper widespread application. In order to overcome these difficulties, redundancy of future monitoring networks should be increased and, at the same time, data handling (including data validation, mining and assimilation) should receive much more attention.

Integrated modelling as an analytical and optimisation tool for urban watershed management

2002 ◽  
Vol 46 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 141-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Erbe ◽  
T. Frehmann ◽  
W.F. Geiger ◽  
P. Krebs ◽  
J. Londong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Standard Procedure ◽  
Treatment Plant ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Integrated Modelling ◽  
State Variables ◽  
Upstream Direction ◽  
Wastewater Systems ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Receiving Water

In recent years numerical modelling has become a standard procedure to optimise urban wastewater systems design and operation. Since the models were developed for the subsystems independently, they did not support an integrated view to the operation of the sewer system, the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and the receiving water. After pointing out the benefits of an integrated approach and the possible synergy effects that may arise from analysing the interactions across the interfaces, three examples of modelling case studies carried out in Germany are introduced. With these examples we intend to demonstrate the potential of integrated models, though their development cannot be considered completed. They are set up with different combinations of self-developed and commercially available software. The aim is to analyse fluxes through the total wastewater system or to integrate pollution-based control in the upstream direction, that is e.g. managing the combined water retention tanks as a function of state variables in the WWTP or the receiving water. Furthermore the interface between the sewer and the WWTP can be optimised by predictive simulations such that the combined water flow can be maximised according to the time- and dynamics-dependent state of the treatment processes.

Cost benefit risk – a concept for management of integrated urban wastewater systems?

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.B. Hauger ◽  
W. Rauche ◽  
J.J. Linde ◽  
P.S. Mikkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Probabilistic Approach ◽  
Treatment Plant ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Environmental Cost ◽  
Decision Variable ◽  
Urban Wastewater ◽  
Parameter Uncertainties ◽  
Wastewater Systems

Urban wastewater systems should be evaluated and analysed from an integrated point of view, taking all parts of the system, that is sewer system, wastewater treatment plant and receiving waters into consideration. Risk and parameter uncertainties are aspects that hardly ever have been addressed in the evaluation and design of urban wastewater systems. In this paper we present and discuss a probabilistic approach for evaluation of the performance of urban wastewater systems. Risk analysis together with the traditional cost-benefit analysis is a special variant of multi-criteria analysis that seeks to find the most feasible improvement alternative for an urban wastewater system. The most feasible alternative in this context is the alternative that has the best performance, meaning that the alternative has the lowest sum of costs, benefits and risks. The sum is expressed as the Net Present Cost (NPC). To use NPC as a decision variable has the problematic effect, that two alternatives performing completely differently when focusing on environmental cost can have the same NPC. The extreme example is one alternative with high risk and low cost and another with low risk and high cost. In this example it is up to the decision-maker to decide whether she wants to spend the budget on preventive installations or cleaning up after failures in the environment.

The HSG procedure for modelling integrated urban wastewater systems

2009 ◽  
Vol 60 (8) ◽  
pp. 2065-2075 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Muschalla ◽  
M. Schütze ◽  
K. Schroeder ◽  
M. Bach ◽  
F. Blumensaat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Availability ◽  
Integrated Modelling ◽  
Urban Wastewater ◽  
Simulation Research ◽  
Central European ◽  
Modelling Studies ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Wastewater Systems ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Selection Of

Whilst the importance of integrated modelling of urban wastewater systems is ever increasing, there is still no concise procedure regarding how to carry out such modelling studies. After briefly discussing some earlier approaches, the guideline for integrated modelling developed by the Central European Simulation Research Group (HSG - Hochschulgruppe) is presented. This contribution suggests a six-step standardised procedure to integrated modelling. This commences with an analysis of the system and definition of objectives and criteria, covers selection of modelling approaches, analysis of data availability, calibration and validation and also includes the steps of scenario analysis and reporting. Recent research findings as well as experience gained from several application projects from Central Europe have been integrated in this guideline.

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