1. To connect or not to connect? Modelling the optimal degree of centralisation for wastewater infrastructures
- Author
-
Sven Eggimann, Bernhard Truffer, and Max Maurer
- Subjects
Centralisation ,Engineering ,Wastewater infrastructure ,Environmental Engineering ,Geographic information system ,Sewer modelling ,Seven Management and Planning Tools ,Degree of centralisation ,Terrain ,Wastewater ,Transport engineering ,Sustainable network infrastructure planning ,Cluster Analysis ,Cluster analysis ,Waste Management and Disposal ,Water Science and Technology ,Civil and Structural Engineering ,business.industry ,Heuristic ,Ecological Modeling ,Algorithmic network generation ,Models, Theoretical ,Environmental economics ,Pollution ,Economies of scale ,business ,Algorithms - Abstract
The strong reliance of most utility services on centralised network infrastructures is becoming increasingly challenged by new technological advances in decentralised alternatives. However, not enough effort has been made to develop planning tools designed to address the implications of these new opportunities and to determine the optimal degree of centralisation of these infrastructures. We introduce a planning tool for sustainable network infrastructure planning (SNIP), a two-step techno-economic heuristic modelling approach based on shortest path-finding and hierarchical-agglomerative clustering algorithms to determine the optimal degree of centralisation in the field of wastewater management. This SNIP model optimises the distribution of wastewater treatment plants and the sewer network outlay relative to several cost and sewer-design parameters. Moreover, it allows us to construct alternative optimal wastewater system designs taking into account topography, economies of scale as well as the full size range of wastewater treatment plants. We quantify and confirm that the optimal degree of centralisation decreases with increasing terrain complexity and settlement dispersion while showing that the effect of the latter exceeds that of topography. Case study results for a Swiss community indicate that the calculated optimal degree of centralisation is substantially lower than the current level. more...
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF