Prioritizing Investments in Improving Flood Resilience and Reliability of Wastewater Treatment Infrastructure

Karamouz, ‪Mohammad; Rasoulnia, E.; Olyaei, Mohammad Ali; Zahmatkesh, Zahra

doi:10.1061/(asce)is.1943-555x.0000434

Cited by 26 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Flood resilience was evaluated using four criteria: rapidity, robustness, resourcefulness, and redundancy. The weight for each criterion was calculated using expert opinion through AHP, and the final resilience score was determined using the PROMETHEE tool (Karamouz et al, 2016; Karamouz et al, 2018).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reliability is typically defined as the ability to comply with regulations under stress and can be quantitatively calculated from stress load and resistance. Resilience represents the ability to return to normal system performance (P 0 ) after performance degradation occurs due to stress, as shown in Figure 1 (Karamouz et al, 2018; Olyaei et al, 2018). The reader is referred to Juan‐Garćia et al (2017) who provide a review of resilience theory as applied to urban wastewater systems.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wastewater management decision‐making: A literature review and synthesis

Ko,

Norton,

Daigger

2024

Water Environment Research

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Wastewater management decision‐making is complicated because of: (1) a complex regulatory structure, (2) the wide variety of conflicting expectations by stakeholders external and internal to the responsible utility, and (2) constrains including regulatory requirements, available technologies and practices, and customer willingness to pay. This review synthesizes the results from over 200 papers published since 2000 and presents a decision‐making structure and process which is (1) science and fact‐based, (2) reflects sustainability, (3) clear and transparent, (4) inclusive, (5) produces an objective‐oriented decision, (6) scalable, (7) repeatable, and (8) efficient. Tools supporting the decision‐making process are reviewed, including Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), process modeling, economic assessments, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). Ultimately it was determined that engagement of decision‐makers and relevant stakeholders to assess their values and preferences, coupled with supporting data and analyses, is necessary to reach a decision that, critically, has the support needed for it to be implemented. The results demonstrate that an understanding of the components of the decision process, coupled with an orderly process, enables good wastewater management decision‐making.Practitioner Points A decision‐making structure and process leading to the selection of implementable solutions is presented. The process possesses the following attributes: (1) science and fact‐based, (2) reflect sustainability, (3) clear and transparent, (4) inclusive, (5) produce an objective‐oriented decision, (6) scalable, (7) repeatable, and (8) efficient An extensive summary and analysis of tools supporting the decision process are provided, including Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), process modeling, economic assessments, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). The critical role of internal and external stakeholders and differentiating their involvement relative to decision‐makers is emphasized.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wastewater management decision‐making: A literature review and synthesis

Ko,

Norton,

Daigger

2024

Water Environment Research

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“…Within the green-infrastructure systems, the concept of building with nature (nature-based solutions) has been developed to utilize natural processes, providing opportunity for the natural environment as part of the infrastructure de-S. Mehvar et al: Review article: Towards resilient vital infrastructure systems velopment process (De Vriend and Van Koningsveld, 2012). Such nature-based solutions may involve restoration plans of degraded ecosystem services (Sapkota et al, 2018;Mostert et al, 2018) and also enhancement of healthy ecosystem services, such as supporting the natural storm recovery potential of dunes that function as flood protection (Keijsers et al, 2015). Nature-based solutions can be functional by themselves or can be developed to improve the performance of grey infrastructure (WWAP, 2018).…”

Section: (C) Nature-based Solutions -Combined Green and Grey Infrastructuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review article: Towards resilient vital infrastructure systems – challenges, opportunities, and future research agenda

Mehvar

Wijnberg

Borsje

et al. 2021

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Infrastructure systems are inextricably tied to society by providing a variety of vital services. These systems play a fundamental role in reducing the vulnerability of communities and increasing their resilience to natural and human-induced hazards. While various definitions of resilience for infrastructure systems exist, analyzing the resilience of these systems within cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary perspectives remains limited and fragmented in research and practice. With the aim to assist researchers and practitioners in advancing understanding of resilience in designing infrastructure systems, this systematic literature review synthesizes and complements existing knowledge on designing resilient vital infrastructures by identifying (1) key conceptual tensions and challenges, (2) engineering and non-engineering measures, and (3) directions for future research. Here, a conceptual framework is developed in which infrastructures are defined as a conglomeration of interdependent social–ecological–technical systems. In addition, we define resilient infrastructures as systems with ability to (i) anticipate and absorb disturbances, (ii) adapt/transform in response to changes, (iii) recover, and (iv) learn from prior unforeseen events. Our results indicate that conceptual and practical challenges in designing resilient infrastructures continue to exist. Hence these systems are still being built without taking resilience explicitly into account. Our review of measures and recent applications shows that the available measures have not been widely applied in designing resilient infrastructure systems. Key concerns to address are identified as (i) the integration of social, ecological, and technical resilience of infrastructure systems with explicit attention paid to cascading effects and dependencies across these complex systems and (ii) the development of new technologies to identify factors that create different recovery characteristics.

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“…After Hurricane Sandy, comprehensive wastewater resiliency plans were created by Balci and Cohn, but the quantification of flood damage for the 14 WWTPs in NYC were not performed from a microscale perspective [30]. Prioritizing investments in improving flood resilience and reliability of WWTP infrastructure was also assessed by Karamouz et al through a multicriteria decision-making process for the fourteen WWTPs in NYC [31].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comprehensive Flood Risk Assessment for Wastewater Treatment Plants under Extreme Storm Events: A Case Study for New York City, United States

et al. 2021

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Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the City of New York, United States, are particularly vulnerable to frequent extreme weather events, including storm surges, high-intensity rainfall, and sea level rise, and are also affected by the cascade of these events. The complex structural configuration of WWTPs requires very fine-scale flood risk assessment, which current research has not pursued. We propose a robust technique to quantify the risk of inundations for the fourteen WWPTs through an automated sub-basin creation tool; 889 sub-basins were generated and merged with high-resolution building footprint data to create a comprehensive database for flood inundation analysis. The inundation depths and extents for the WWTPs and flood-prone regions were identified from hydrodynamic modeling of storm surge and sea level rise. The economic damage due to flooding for the WWTPs was also quantified using the HAZUS-MH model. Results indicated that the storm surges from various categories of hurricanes have the dominant impacts on flood depths around WWTPs, followed by high-intensity rainfall. Sea level rise was shown to have a relatively minor impact on flood depths. Results from economic damage analysis showed that the WWTPs are subjected to damage ranging from USD 60,000 to 720,000, depending on the size of the WWTP and the extremity of storm surge. The method of analyzing the inundation status of the research object through the sub-basin enables more accurate data to be obtained when calculating the runoff. It allows for a clearer view of the inundation status of the WWTPs when combined with the actual buildings. Using this database, predicting flood conditions of any extreme event or a cascade of extreme events can be conducted quickly and accurately.

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Prioritizing Investments in Improving Flood Resilience and Reliability of Wastewater Treatment Infrastructure

Cited by 26 publications

References 23 publications

Wastewater management decision‐making: A literature review and synthesis

Wastewater management decision‐making: A literature review and synthesis

Review article: Towards resilient vital infrastructure systems – challenges, opportunities, and future research agenda

Comprehensive Flood Risk Assessment for Wastewater Treatment Plants under Extreme Storm Events: A Case Study for New York City, United States

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