Four alternative cases for water supply were environmentally evaluated and compared based on the standard environmental impact categories from the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology extended with a freshwater withdrawal category (FWI). The cases were designed for Copenhagen, a part of Denmark with high population density and relatively low available water resources. FWI was applied at loca...

Water supply system is socially, politically, and financially critical, and long term security of water supply has to be met in spite of the huge uncertainty in its operation decades since the time of design. Everyone concerned with architecting such a system faces a common challenge: how do we design a system to perform well in a constantly evolving and thus risky context? As one of the water-...

Rapid population growth in developing cities often outpaces improvements to drinking water supplies, and sub-Saharan Africa as a region has the highest percentage of urban population without piped water access, a figure that continues to grow. Accra, Ghana, implements a rationing system to distribute limited piped water resources within the city, and privately-vended sachet water-sealed single-...

INTRODUCTION Access to safe drinking water is essential to human life and wellbeing, and is a key public health issue. However, many communities in rural and regional parts of Australia are unable to access drinking water that meets national standards for protecting human health. The aim of this research was to identify the key issues in and barriers to the provision and management of safe drin...

Field research into the climatic history and shifting of the East Saharan desert has furnished evidence that during Quaternary time the present extremely arid western part of Upper Nubia (northern Sudan)was temporarily linked to the Nile by way of a hitherto unknown 400 kilometer long tributary. From about 9500 to 4500 years ago, lower Wadi Howar flowed through an environment characterized by n...

In the world’s highest tropical mountain range, the Cordillera Blanca of Peru, impacts linked to climatic change, increasing pressures on water resources, rapidly rising petroleum costs and shifting market conditions are threatening the viability of agricultural systems. Currently, these distinct processes of change are converging in ways that significantly enhance and reinforce their negative ...

When describing the hydraulic relationship between rivers and aquifers, the term disconnected is frequently misunderstood or used in an incorrect way. The problem is compounded by the fact that there is no definitive literature on the topic of disconnected surface water and groundwater. We aim at closing this gap and begin the discussion with a short introduction to the historical background of...

Changes in precipitation could have crucial influences on the regional water resources in arid regions such as Xinjiang. It is necessary to understand the intrinsic multi-scale variations of precipitation in different parts of Xinjiang in the context of climate change. In this study, based on precipitation data from 53 meteorological stations in Xinjiang during 1960-2012, we investigated the in...

Large quantities of animal residuals are produced every day. In some cases, these residuals can be recycled by application to land in its raw form. In other cases, the residuals must be treated to reduce its strength in order to recycle that material on land. Large production units for producing animals are on the rise, thus no longer allowing recycling on land as a viable option. For processin...