Quantitative Assessment of Future Sustainability Performance in Urban Water Services using WaterMet

Extended abstract Urban water services are likely to face challenges in the future, mainly due to population growth, climate change, increasing urbanization and ageing infrastructure. These factors are expected to impose significant strains on the performance of urban water services. This would subsequently decrease the capacity and quality of services in the urban water system (UWS) and thus negatively affect different dimensions of the sustainability framework (i.e. economic, environmental, social, asset and governance) presented by Alegre et al. (2012). Performance of future sustainability in the UWS can be evaluated by using simulation of metabolism-based processes in the urban water cycles over a pre-specified horizon. The WaterMet model developed in the TRUST project quantifies the metabolism-based performance of the integrated UWS (Behzadian et al. 2014a). The integrated modelling of the UWS implies the whole processes and components in an urban area related to water flows as a complex and interrelated system. A mass balance approach of water is followed within the system. Figure 1 illustrates the main flows and storages modelled in WaterMet comprising of four main subsystems.