Collaborative Research: Analysis of Decentralized Harvested Rainwater Systems using the Urban Water Infrastructure Sustainability Evaluation (uWISE) Framework

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1236660 (Apul). The current urban water infrastructure in the U.S. is in failing condition, energy intensive, largely underfunded, and being over-extended by urban sprawl. There is an urgent need to chart an effective pathway to future sustainable water infrastructure that integrates the understanding and interactions of water supply, sanitation, and stormwater management and implications of these practices on sustainability metrics. This project envisions that decentralization of water infrastructure will play an important role in creating such future sustainable and resilient urban environments. Decentralized rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems are the focus of this project. Their use in toilet flushing has great potential to not only reduce the demand on potable water supply but also reduce stormwater runoff volumes. In addition, the technology is mature and fairly easy to implement in new development and in existing building stock. Thus, RWH is positioned as a feasible and promising first step towards a decentralized urban water management paradigm. This project will develop a new and extensible sustainability modeling and analysis framework, called Urban Water Infrastructure Sustainability Evaluation (uWISE). The uWISE framework will be applied to analyze water infrastructure configurations where harvested rainwater is used to flush toilets and compare it to the centralized urban water infrastructure alternative in terms of a robust set of sustainability metrics. The uWISE framework couples dynamic urban watershed modeling with life cycle assessment at both building and watershed scales with extensibility in mind. Another aspect of this project is its development of the ?desired value analysis? approach, which uses Bayesian statistics to determine the system design parameter space necessary for creating sustainable outcomes. Through involvement in cross-institution research activities, two PhD students will be trained, one of which will gain first-hand experience in curriculum development and college teaching. Research results will be integrated in University of Toledo and University of Utah civil engineering courses. A collaborative distance learning environment will be used to offer a new graduate course in Sustainable Urban Water Infrastructure, in which students from the two universities will work together in completing an integrated infrastructure sustainability project using uWISE and other project results. Research results will be shared with local stakeholders using our existing collaborations within Northwest Ohio and Utah. Results will also be outreached nationally using peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and via ASCE, ISI, and USGBC. Specifically, incorporation of project outcomes to enhance the LEED building rating system and the Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) EnvisionTM rating system will be pursued.