Literature review: Modelling the urban water cycle

Introduction
Reviewed paper is basically a brief representation of a water balance
model named Aquacycle developed in Australia. Aquacycle represents
water flow through the urban water supply, stormwater and waste water
systems. Generally urban water management means to remove
stormwater and waste water from urban areas efficiently but in this model
an alternative approach is adopted. Here the stormwater and wastewater
is considered as a potential resource substitute for supplied water. This
approach suits todays need to minimise the environmental impact of
urban areas on supply sources and receiving waters and therefore
utilisation of urban stormwater and wastewater is very much necessary
which can be achieved using the approach discussed here.
Summary
Aquacycle uses simple water balance approach i.e. the application of
principle of mass conservation to water (Grimmond et al; 1986), which
gives a complete knowledge of spatial and temporal pattern of water
demand and stormwater and wastewater supply. Spatial resolution for
modelling such schemes requires the knowledge of scale of operation. For
more versatility several nested spatial scales were used namely, unit
block, cluster and catchment. Unit block may represent a single
household, cluster represent a group of uniform unit blocks and catchment
is a group of many clusters. Urban water cycle receives input as
precipitation and supplied/imported water, which flow in system and
outputs are mainly evapotranspiration, stormwater and wastewater. Input
was provided in groups as indoor water usage, climate and physical
characteristics data.
Various components of urban water cycle are:

Precipitation
1. Pervious surface stores
2. Impervious surface stores
Evapotranspiration
1. Pervious surface evapotranspiration
2. Impervious surface evapotranspiration
Imported water
1. Ground water storage as leakage
2. Irrigation
3. Wastewater discharge as indoor water use IWU
Rainfall excess
1. As pervious surface runof

2. Infiltration store recharge

3. Groundwater recharge
Infiltration store goes to wastewater discharge as infiltration
Groundwater storage constitutes baseflow and joins stormwater
runof

Water balance equation adopted as:

Precipitation + imported water = evapotranspiration + wastewater
discharge + stormwater runof + change in storage
Main model algorithm

Baseflow = baseflow recession constant * groundwater storage

Pervious and impervious surface evapotranspiration and is
calculated using empirical equations
Rainfall excess is also calculated using empirical equations
Infiltration = infiltration store recession constant * square root
(infiltration store level)
Irrigation, impervious surface runof and inflow to wastewater
discharge from stormwater runof), leakage discharge and
groundwater recharge all are calculated empirically.

Calibration of model was done on very few sites data which were
available. Manual trial and error process was adopted. Validation of model
considered measures like goodness of fit, ratio of sum of simulated flow to
sum of recorded flow, sum of squares of diferences of simulated and
recorded flows (Diskin and Simon, 1977) were used.
Various drawbacks of modelling approach can be outlined. No flow routing
is considered in the model. Total amount of water flow into and out of
system is considered neglecting the peak of flows and generation of
hydrograph. Moreover it does not simulate water quality. It was assumed
that runof production is independent of rainfall intensity which results in
modelling errors. The model also lacks auto calibration capabilities which
make calibration process very cumbersome.
Conclusion
Water supply demands can be satisfied by reuse of stormwater and
wastewater within the urban area. This is a major advantage over disposal
of urban wastewater. Aquacycle was found very efective in representing
urban water cycle which helps in determining new alternatives for urban
water management.

References
Diskin, M.H., Simon, E., 1977. A procedure for the selection of objective functions
for hydrologic simulation models. Journal of Hydrology 34, 129-149.
Grimmond, C.S.B., Oke, T.R., 1986. Urban Water balance 2. Results from a auburb
of Vancouver, British Columbia. Water Resources Research 22 (10), 1404-1412.
V.G. Mitchell, R.G. Mein, T.A. McMahon, 2001. Modelling the urban water cycle.
Environmental Modelling & Software 16 (2001) 615-629.