World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2018
A Watershed Scale Life Cycle Assessment Framework for Stormwater Management
Publication: World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2018: Groundwater, Sustainability, and Hydro-Climate/Climate Change
ABSTRACT
Designing sustainable urban water infrastructure requires consideration of hydrologic and hydraulic performance (H&H) and the life cycle assessment (LCA). Although LCA (ISO 14044) has been widely used for the sustainability assessment of a variety of infrastructure and products, its application in water resources is limited. The objective of this paper is to present a method of integrating H&H and LCA criteria into the evaluation of the environmental sustainability of urban water infrastructure. This method serves as a decision support system for analyzing stormwater control infrastructure. Rainwater harvesting (RWH), a trending decentralized urban water infrastructure, showcases the application of the proposed method in this paper. Results show that without using an integrated method, life cycle impacts are noticeably underestimated. The integrated method provided broader information on stormwater control strategies, and indicated the strengths and weaknesses of each scenario.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper presents a part of a research for the urban Water Infrastructures Sustainability Evaluation (uWISE) project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) through grants CBET-1235855 and 1236660.
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Published In
World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2018: Groundwater, Sustainability, and Hydro-Climate/Climate Change
Pages: 294 - 303
Editor: Sri Kamojjala, Las Vegas Valley Water District
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8141-7
Copyright
© 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: May 31, 2018
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