Pairing Quantity and Quality in a Mass Balance of Water in California
Publication: Journal of Sustainable Water in the Built Environment
Volume 9, Issue 2
Abstract
One of the tools used to assess water availability is a water budget, which is useful for tracking quantity, but does not provide information regarding the quality of the water. This paper introduces a seven-step method for creating a water budget, in the form of a modified mass flow diagram that depicts the quality of each quantity of water. The method involves delineating the system boundary for the water balance; selecting the water budget time period to be used for analysis; collecting water quantity data applicable to the selected system boundary and time period; drawing a modified mass flow diagram; selecting and assigning a color code to the selected water quality scale; applying the color code representing water quality to the modified mass flow diagram; and ordering diagram slices by level of water quality. Adding water quality to water budgets may not only show areas where there is room for improvement, but also depict areas where there are resources and opportunities that might not have been visually obvious from a table of numbers.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
This research is funded in part by Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Sustainable Water in the Built Environment
Volume 9 • Issue 2 • May 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 16, 2022
Accepted: Dec 8, 2022
Published online: Feb 14, 2023
Published in print: May 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Jul 14, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Budgets
- Business management
- Construction engineering
- Construction management
- Data analysis
- Domain boundary
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Financial management
- Hydrologic engineering
- Hydrologic properties
- Hydrology
- Management methods
- Mathematics
- Methodology (by type)
- Practice and Profession
- Quality control
- Research methods (by type)
- Standards and codes
- Water and water resources
- Water balance
- Water management
- Water policy
- Water quality
- Water resources
- Water treatment
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