Enhancing Sustainability Performance in Aquatic Centres: A Life Cycle Approach

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Swimming is one of Canada's most popular activities for exercise and relaxation. Canada has around 2700 publicly owned pools, out of which > 35% are indoor swimming pool facilities (ISPs). ISPs require high energy inputs to maintain good water and indoor quality and thus pose a unique challenge for municipalities to meet provincial and federal greenhouse gas reduction targets. This project involves a partnership between academia, industry, and municipalities to develop best management practices to minimize environmental impacts and reduce overall operational costs while maintaining high water and air quality standards. This requires developing a water-health-energy nexus (WHEN) to understand the interdependencies between energy and resource inputs, water and air quality, and cost-effectiveness. The project will be completed in several phases, i.e., (1) monitor and collect data related to water and air quality in (ISPs), (2) Develop predictive models to understand the fate and transport of water and air quality parameters using integrated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models with fugacity-based approaches, (3) Investigate the energy and air quality performance of the selected facilities through continuous monitoring under different background settings, (4) Assess and optimize water and air quality, life cycle costs, and environmental impacts of ISP operations to evaluate the feasibility of reaching net-zero status (energy and carbon emissions) using WHEN, and (5) Develop operational strategies for healthy, economically feasible, and sustainable pool management. These objectives will be integrated into an 'ePool' dashboard interface which will monitor pool conditions in real-time for operators. This tool will help ISP facility managers develop a trade-off between a good indoor pool environment (water and air quality) and optimal operational strategies (low economic and environmental impacts) to promote the sustainable operations of ISPs.