Modelling the urban water cycle

Abstract

Current urban water management practices aim to remove stormwater and wastewater efficiently from urban areas. An alternative approach is to consider stormwater and wastewater as a potential resource substitute for a portion of the water imported via the reticulated supply system. A holistic view of urban water resources provides the framework for the evaluation of the demand for water supply, the availability of stormwater and wastewater, and the interactions between them. The water balance model (Aquacycle) developed in this study represents water flows through the urban water supply, stormwater, and wastewater systems. Its daily time step provides temporal distribution of the flows, and enables comparison of the different components of the urban water demand. Aquacycle was tested using data from the Woden Valley urban catchment in Canberra, Australia and found able to satisfactorily replicate its water supply, stormwater and wastewater flows.