Sewer Water Harvesting to Support Urban Green Spaces: The potential of ‘waste’ water as a resource to support urban green spaces during dry periods through integrated local water treatment

This research has investigated how Sewer Water Harvesting (SWH) can be applied to provide a climate-proof fresh water source to support Urban Green Spaces (UGS) in Amsterdam. SWH is the process of extracting raw municipal sewage from the sewer and locally treating this to provide fit-for-purpose water in a dense urban environment while treatment...

Leak Localization in Water Distribution Networks

Leakage is the main source of water loss in water distribution networks (WDNs). Therefore, leak detection and localization technology is a major concern for water utilities to save water and meet the ever-growing water demand. This study presents two methodologies for leak localization in District Metered Areas (DMAs): (1) a model-based method...

Serious gaming to support the adoption of sustainable drainage solutions: A serious game to educate citizens about private household SuDS

There is an urgent need for urban environments to be more flood resilient. The public can participate in addressing this by adopting household sustainable drainage solutions (SuDS). However, their lack of knowledge and awareness is a barrier. This paper presents an educational serious game to overcome this barrier and explores whether it can...

RTC strategy reducing the ecological impact of an urban drainage system

Urban wastewater systems can impact the urban ecology by untreated wastewater discharges through combined sewer overflow (CSO) events, or by partial treatment of the wastewater at the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). CSO events can cause oxygen depletion, eutrophication, and the discharge of pathogens. The partial treatment of the wastewater...

Development of an LSTM-based methodology for burst detection in water distribution systems

Water utilities face many challenges, including pipe bursts that cause significant non-revenue water losses. Detecting those bursts early is important for the water sector in its path to achieve sustainable water resource management. This study presents a scalable data-driven methodology for burst detection in water distribution systems that is...

Circularity and adaptability as possible approaches to mitigate urban drought: a case study of the city of Breda

From 2018 to 2020, the city of Breda (NL) faced drought, with significant economic losses and water scarcity problems. The water board within which the city is located began to consider new possible water management practices, due to the unsustainability of the current ones. This study aims to investigate how a change of the current paradigm can...

Exploration of Deep Learning-based Computer Vision for the detection of floating plastic debris in waterways

Plastic pollution is one of the most challenging global environmental problems. Currently, more than 1000 rivers transport approximately 80% of the plastic influx into the oceans. Naturally, more and more companies are interested in tackling this problem. One of them is Noria Sustainable Innovators, a company based in Delft (Netherlands). It is...