Search results for "Urban water cycle"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
Multicriteria performance analysis of an integrated urban wastewater system for energy management
2017
AbstractThe optimization and management of an integrated urban wastewater system is a complex problem involving many processes and variables. The possible control options are defined by several management strategies that may differently impact the economic, operational or environmental performance of the system. The present paper aims to contribute to the environmental and energy sustainability of urban wastewater systems by means of a multicriteria performance analysis. The paper begins with a complete analysis of the system performance in several fields of interest (energy, environment, quality of service, operation, economy and financial resources), and it highlights the management stren…
Life Cycle Costing: a tool to manage the urban water cycle
2013
The Water Framework Directive puts much emphasis on the role of economics for improving the management of water resources. In the context of the urban water cycle, previous studies have proven that Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is a useful methodology for assessing the costs of the whole cycle. However, there are many elements and factors that can influence the results of the LCC assessment and therefore affect the decision making process. The main aim of this study is to identify the main difficulties for carrying out LCC studies in the urban water cycle and to propose some solutions to overcome them. Hence, the conclusions obtained from the assessment of several case studies will be more robus…
Assessing the marginal cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the English and Welsh water and sewerage industry: A parametric approach
2021
Abstract Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions involves effort from different sectors of the economy, including the water and sewerage industry. This study estimates the marginal cost of curtailing GHG emissions in the water and sewerage industry using stochastic frontier analysis techniques for a sample of ten English and Welsh water and sewerage companies over the 2010–2019 period. Results illustrated that the average marginal cost of reducing GHG emissions was 0.181 £/Kg CO2 equivalent. The marginal cost estimated notably differs across companies and over time. Findings further illustrate the impact of water companies' operating characteristics on the marginal cost of reducing carbon e…
Drivers of productivity change: a comparison of English and Welsh water only and water and sewerage companies
2021
In regulated industries, such as the water industry, it is of great significance to estimate productivity change as it helps policy makers to evaluate the effectiveness of regulatory regime and ind...
Assessing performance in the management of the urban water cycle
2011
This paper proposes the use of directional distance functions and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques to assess technical efficiency in the provision of the different stages of the urban water cycle in Andalusia, a Southern European region. Evaluating performance in the management of specific stages of the urban water cycle provides utility managers and regulating authorities with relevant information that may not be detected by more conventional approaches based on assessing performance at utility level. We find that Andalusian water and sewage utilities could achieve significant increases in the volume of water delivered without diminishing the output of their other services and using th…
Water and Energy Saving in Urban Water Systems: The ALADIN Project
2016
The ALADIN project was aimed at contributing to environmental and energy sustainability of the urban water system by means of a decision support tool able to allow an evaluation of the energy impact related to each different macro-sectors of urban water cycle highlighting the main energy flows and to assess the system energy balance and identify the possible energy-efficient solutions. Moreover the tool suggests the most efficient actions in reducing water losses. In the present paper the main features of the developed tool are presented. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.