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Climate change is driving global endeavours to achieve carbon neutrality and renewable energy expansion. Sludge, a nutrient-rich waste, holds energy potential yet poses environmental challenges that need proper management. We conducted a comprehensive life cycle assessment to evaluate the energy balance and environmental footprint of the most commonly used sludge management scenarios in BRICS countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Technologies such as incineration and anaerobic digestion with energy recovery units (i.e., cogeneration unit) maximize energy balance and minimize the environmental footprint, with incineration showing a superior performance. Shifting sludge management scenarios from the worst to the best can boost energy production by 1.4–98.4 times and cut the environmental footprint by 1.5–21.4 times. In 2050, these improvements could lead to a 98-fold boost in energy generation and a 25-fold drop in carbon emissions, according to the Announced Pledges Scenarios. Optimizing parameters such as volatile solids and anaerobic digestion efficiency further boosts energy output and minimizes the environmental footprint. This study offers robust evidence to support sustainable sludge management and thus promote energy recovery and carbon neutrality goals, guide technological transitions, and inform policymaking for sustainable development.

Abstract Although the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emergency status is easing, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect healthcare systems globally. It is crucial to have a reliable and population-wide prediction tool for estimating COVID-19-induced hospital admissions. We evaluated the feasibility of using wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) to predict COVID-19-induced weekly new hospitalizations in 159 counties across 45 states in the United States of America (USA), covering a population of nearly 100 million. Using county-level weekly wastewater surveillance data (over 20 months), WBE-based models were established through the random forest algorithm. WBE-based models accurately predicted the county-level weekly new admissions, allowing a preparation window of 1-4 weeks. In real applications, periodically updated WBE-based models showed good accuracy and transferability, with mean absolute error within 4-6 patients/100k population for upcoming weekly new hospitalization numbers. Our study demonstrated the potential of using WBE as an effective method to provide early warnings for healthcare systems.

The International Water Association (IWA) initiated a Task Force in April 2020 to serve as a leadership team within IWA whose role is to keep abreast and communicate the emerging science, technology, and applications for understanding the impact and the ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and specifically designed for water professionals and industries. Expertise was nominated across the world with the purpose of collectively providing the water sector with knowledge products for the guidance on the control of COVID-19 and other viruses. This review paper developed by a working group of the IWA Task Force focuses on the control of COVID-19. The purpose of this review paper is to provide an understanding of existing knowledge with regards to COVID-19 and provide the necessary guidance of risk mitigation based on currently available knowledge of viruses in wastewater. This review paper considered various scenarios for both the developed world and the developing world and provided recommendations for managing risk. The review paper serves to pool the knowledge with regards to the pandemic and in relation to other viruses. The IWA Task Team envisage that this review paper provides the necessary guidance to the global response to the ongoing pandemic. HIGHLIGHTS Review of existing research of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, that causes COVID-19 and other viruses in relation to wastewater process control and risk mitigation.; Available techniques for wastewater process engineers to reduce health risks associated with COVID-19 within wastewater processes.; Risk mitigation for developing countries that are serviced by small wastewater treatment works.;

Dams that serve a dual purpose of water supply and flood mitigation operate to maintain a defined full supply level of water that balances the two conflicting requirements. To optimize the use of available storage space, the full supply level may be adjusted to reflect changing risks of future water shortages and future flood inflows based on known seasonal variations and current observations. The Warragamba Dam in eastern Australia is located upstream of the populated Hawkesbury-Nepean valley which has one of the largest flood exposures in the country. However, the operating protocol of the reservoir does not include provisions to reduce the full supply level of the dam for flood mitigation. Large scale climate indicators that are known to influence the hydroclimate of this region may potentially contain useful information to inform the dual use of this reservoir, but their utility for this purpose has not been studied. Here we explore whether current observations of large-scale climate along with antecedent catchment conditions can be used to estimate the probability of large inflows into the reservoir in the next 3- and 6 months, to aid flood management. We find that the predictors have a substantial influence on the probability of large inflows. The probability differences during opposite predictor phases vary by season and range from 30% to 70%. Our results indicate that considering current climate information to inform dual use of the Warragamba dam has merit.