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Water and Carbon Footprints for Sustainability Analysis of Urban Infrastructure - abstract
Citation:
Yang, J., N. Chang, J. Neal, H. Wei, M. Liang, AND T. Keener. Water and Carbon Footprints for Sustainability Analysis of Urban Infrastructure - abstract. Presented at EWRI 2013, Cincinnati, OH, May 20 - 22, 2013.
Impact/Purpose:
The product describes a proposed system sustainability matrix to quantify water adn carbon footprints in urban infrastructure adaptations
Description:
Water and transportation infrastructures define spatial distribution of urban population and economic activities. In this context, energy and water consumed per capita are tangible measures of how efficient water and transportation systems are constructed and operated. At a higher level, the per capita footprints are normalized by water availability and permissible carbon emission allocation. The resulting normalized footprint indices can be a tool to characterize location-specific resource constraints affecting urban development. Conjunctive use of the indices and economic cost thus form a matrix for the sustainability evaluation of alternative adaptation options in urban infrastructure. In this paper, we first outline the basic theoretical consideration for the water and carbon footprints per capita, and their normalized counterparts. Computation of the indices is illustrated using two case studies: the water infrastructure expansion in Manatee County, Florida, and the transportation network in Cincinnati, Ohio. Based on the results, we will discuss the computational methods, their input variables and uncertainties, based on which potential management options can be evaluated in Pareto optimization space. Such quantitative analysis can be used as a basis for evaluation of alternative optimization pathways.
