Climate change becomes increasingly more relevant in the context of water systems planning. Tools are necessary to provide the most economic investment option considering the reliability of the infrastructure from technical and environmental perspectives. Accordingly, in this work, an optimisation approach, formulated as a spatially-explicit multi-period Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model, is proposed for the design of water supply chains at regional and national scales. The optimisation framework encompasses decisions such as installation of new purification plants, capacity expansion, and raw water trading schemes. The objective is to minimise the total cost incurring from capital and operating expenditures. Assessment of available resources for withdrawal is performed based on hydrological balances, governmental rules and sustainable limits. In the light of the increasing importance of reliability of water supply, a second objective, seeking to maximise the reliability of the supply chains, is introduced. The epsilon-constraint method is used as a solution procedure for the multi-objective formulation. Nash bargaining approach is applied to investigate the fair trade-offs between the two objectives and find the Pareto optimality. The models' capability is addressed through a case study based on Australia. The impact of variability in key input parameters is tackled through the implementation of a rigorous global sensitivity analysis (GSA). The findings suggest that variations in water demand can be more disruptive for the water supply chain than scenarios in which rainfalls are reduced. The frameworks can facilitate governmental multi-aspect decision making processes for the adequate and strategic investments of regional water supply infrastructure.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.03.358 | DOI Listing |
Environ Monit Assess
January 2025
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
The study of land cover dynamics and the valuation of ecosystem services in coastal cities is pivotal for guiding sustainable urban development and conserving natural resources amidst the unique challenges posed by their geographical and ecological contexts. This study utilizes a 30 m × 30 m land use/cover change (LUCC) dataset to elucidate the spatiotemporal evolution of LUCC and ecosystem service value (ESV) and the trade-offs and synergistic relationships among ecosystem services in the coastal city of Qingdao under three different scenarios over the past 35 years and in the future based on the dual perspective of the past-future by using the equivalent factor approach (EFA), the PLUS model, and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. The findings reveal a pronounced expansion in built-up areas in Qingdao from 1985 to 2020, with a concomitant significant reduction in cropland, leading to a fluctuation in the total ESV, which initially increased and then declined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Health Perspect
January 2025
Silent Spring Institute, Newton, Massachusetts, USA.
Background: Unregulated contaminants in drinking water, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), can contribute to cumulative health risks, particularly in overburdened and less-advantaged communities. To our knowledge, there has been no nationwide assessment of socioeconomic disparities in exposures to unregulated contaminants in drinking water.
Objective: The goals of this study were to identify determinants of unregulated contaminant detection among US public water systems (PWSs) and evaluate disparities related to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
Hydrogels are popular materials for desalination and can significantly reduce the vaporization enthalpy of water; however, there are few reports on hydrogels with a controllable multilevel structural design for water evaporation. Herein, a calcium alginate and traditional Chinese ink-based evaporator (CIE) are proposed and fabricated using directed freezing technology to construct radial channels, followed by freeze-drying and physical cross-linking. Because of the squeezing of ice crystals and the shaping effect of the PDMS template, the prepared evaporator exhibits a sea-urchin-shaped highly geometrical centrosymmetric structure with numerous multilevel pore channels, which promotes the rapid transport of water under different solar incidence angles as the sun rotates as well as overcomes the structural shrinkage of the hydrogel caused by insufficient water supply.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAngew Chem Int Ed Engl
January 2025
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, College of Materials Science and Technology, No. 169 Sheng Tai West Road, Jiangning District, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, 211106, Nanjing, CHINA.
The neutral oxygen catalysis is an electrochemical reaction of the utmost importance in energy generation, storage application, and chemical synthesis. However, the restricted availability of protons poses a challenge to achieving kinetically favorable oxygen catalytic reactions. Here, we alter the interfacial water orientation by adjusting the Brønsted acidity at the catalyst surface, to break the proton transfer limitation of neutral oxygen electrocatalysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSmall
January 2025
College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China.
Solar desalination shows promise in tackling freshwater shortages, but challenges arise from the trade-off between water transportation and heat supply, affecting evaporators' efficiency and salt resistance. Additionally, intermittent nature of solar radiation significantly diminishes overall evaporative performance. This study presents dual-gradient heating solar evaporator for efficient desalination.
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