ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: This paper describes a major European/Australian initiative on Assessing and Improving the Sustainability of Urban Water Resources and Systems (AISUWRS). The project aimed to allow cities to assess the impact of leaking urban water infrastructure on the long-term viability of their groundwater supplies for potable water use. By understanding contaminant fluxes and the movement of contaminants from the infrastructure into the underlying aquifer, water utility managers are able to predict whether urban contaminants and the utilities own urban water management systems could adversely affect aquifer sustainability. Decision support models, which feed socioeconomic models have been developed in the project, which allows the assessment of different scenarios to determine the most sustainable method of managing water/sewer/stormwater infrastructure to minimise aquifer pollution effects. One of the major outcomes will be a set of guidelines for the sustainable development of urban water systems that take into account the likely future effects of groundwater contamination. For the verification and validation of the model, detailed field studies have been carried out in the four case study cities of Mt Gambier (Australia), Doncaster (UK), Rastatt (Germany) and Ljubljana (Slovenia). The models will be directly applicable to other European and Australian cities that are dependent on groundwater for their potable water supply, and will allow the long-term cost estimation of city-specific scenarios and practices to be assessed.
