Decision support for sustainable option selection in integrated urban water management
Conventional urban previous termwaternext term management practices aim to meet previous termwaternext term supply-demands while conveying wastewater and stormwater away from urban settings. Alternative approaches which consider previous termwaternext term demands to be manageable and wastewater and stormwater as valuable resources, although being increasingly sought, lack reliable site specific implementation methodologies. This paper describes the development of a decision support tool (termed the Urban previous termWaternext term Optioneering Tool (UWOT)) to facilitate the selection of combinations of previous termwaternext term saving strategies and technologies and to support the delivery of integrated, sustainable previous termwaternext term management for new developments. The tool is based on a previous termwaternext term balance model which allows the investigation of interactions between the major urban previous termwaternext term cycle streams. The model is informed by a knowledge library which is populated with technological options and information on their major characteristics and performance. The technology selection is driven by a GA algorithm allowing efficient exploration of the decision space. Quantitative and qualitative sustainability criteria and indicators are used to compare between alternative composite previous termwaternext term management strategies while preserving the multiobjective nature of the problem. The tool has been successfully tested on a case study site in the UK, and the results are presented and discussed. It is suggested that “optioneering” tools will increasingly become part of urban previous termwaternext term management planning toolkits as practice moves towards more decentralised, integrated, context-specific solutions to address issues of sustainability.



















