Distributed optimal technology networks: a concept and strategy for potable water sustainability

Abstract

Viable strategies for ensuring adequate supplies of potable water are essential to long-term societal sustainability. The steadily increasing necessity for multiple reuse of water in urban societies is even now taxing our technical and financial abilities to meet ongoing needs for water suitable for human consumption. As a consequence, the current practice of treating the entire water demands of urban communities to the increasingly stringent standards required for drinking water is becoming an unsustainable practice, and thus a questionable strategy for planning and development of urban water systems. An innovative technology-based concept for implementation of a more sustainable strategy and practice for potable water is developed here. The concept is predicated on the inherent advantages of flexibility and responsiveness associated with decentralization of complex functions and operations. Specifically, it calls for strategic dispersal of flexible advanced treatment and control technologies throughout urban water transport and storage networks. This is in direct contradistinction to current strategies and practices of centralized and inflexible monolithic facilities. By integrating use-related satellite systems with critical components of existing systems and infrastructures, the concept can enable and facilitate optimal cost-effective applications of highly sophisticated advanced treatment and on-line monitoring and control technologies to in-place infrastructures in a holistic and sustainable manner.