Session 8 | Tuesday, November 9 | 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM EST

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ATTN OFFICIAL JUDGES FOR THE STUDENT PRESENTATION COMPETITION: If you were contacted by the Conference Planning Committee Student Activities Chair, Allison Lewis, remember to use the appropriate evaluation form when scoring student participants. The link and QR code to this form was emailed to you along with your student assignments. To make identifying student participants easier, the green graduation cap  next to a session title includes a student who is participating in the PRESENTATION Competition

Decision Support Tools for Sustainable Water Supply and Demand Management at Tampa Bay Water

Moderator: Hui Wang

Presenters:

• Hui Wang, Tampa Bay Water, "A Framework of Multi-objective Optimization for Monthly Water Resources Allocation from Multiple Supply Sources"
Complexity of considering tradeoff among various objectives often limits water practitioners to explicitly incorporate multi-objectives in decision-making processes. This study presents a framework for determining monthly resource allocation from multiple supply sources that considers multiple objectives, including deviation from fiscal year budget, under or over utilization of a given portfolio of resources, and total cost of water production. This framework is comprised of a simulation model, namely production allocation model (PAM) and a multi-objective evolution algorithm (MOEA). The multi-objective evolution algorithm (MOEA) is used to search for Pareto optimum solutions across different objectives and the PAM uses MOEA output and considers operational constraints to achieve preferential operations within a given objective function. Stochastic demand and supply realizations were generated to capture a wide range of uncertainties which were then sampled by a Latin Hyper Cube to make the computation tractable. A parallel computing environment was used to implement this near real time decision support tool, allowing the generation of timely guidance for water resources managers. Application of the proposed framework is demonstrated for a regional wholesale water supply utility, Tampa Bay Water, in west coast Florida in United States. The framework can be applied to other regions with similar challenges in water resources management.


• David Gold, Cornell University, "If not now, when? Measuring system risk to inform the timing of infrastructure investments"
Accelerating urban demand growth coupled with changing hydro-climatic conditions are stressing water supply systems in many large urban areas of the United States. In response, urban water utilities must formulate sustainable infrastructure investment strategies that maintain supply reliability while balancing their debt burden. The timing of new infrastructure investment plays a critical role in the success of a sustainable water supply management strategy. If decision makers wait too long before investing in new infrastructure, they risk loss of supply reliability; if they invest too early, they may make large and inefficient expenditures. A core component of this timing is characterizing system risk and understanding the consequences of infrastructure investment both in terms of supply reliability and financial stability. This work examines the infrastructure timing question for the Tampa Bay Water Authority in Florida. We begin with two classic measures of system reliability and vulnerability and examine their efficacy for triggering infrastructure. Our analysis highlights the benefits and challenges associated with the proposed measures of risk and their influence on the timing of infrastructure investments. Our results provide a roadmap that allows decision makers to time investment decisions based on their risk tolerance. These findings are broadly applicable to water resources infrastructure investment problems worldwide.


• David Gorelick, UNC, "Modeling water utility adaptive financial response to supply infrastructure development"
Water utilities must constantly adapt to meet increasing water demands. However, infrastructure investment to expand supply in the form of new reservoirs, treatment plants, or other capital projects can strain utility budgets and lead to water rate hikes, so water managers must balance these investments with affordability for end users . Furthermore, few studies have directly quantified decision-relevant financial outcomes of water supply system adaptation , and none have dynamically modeled adaptive budgetary response to changing supply and demand conditions. This research involves the development of a coupled supply-financial modeling framework for the Tampa Bay Water Authority (TBW), the Southeast United States’ largest water wholesaler, which faces several decisions as water demands are on track to exceed existing supply capacity by 2028. This framework includes the creation of a standalone financial risk assessment tool, able to track TBW’s budgetary response to future water demand shifts and infrastructure expansion, quantifying the effects of decision-making and demand growth on water rates, as well as the ability of TBW to meet key budgetary criteria (i.e. debt service coverage ratio, reserve fund contributions). Results provide insight into the added value of integrated modeling of financial metrics into long-term forecasting of water supply decision-making, as well as how decision-making can be improved through collaborative development of modeling frameworks between researchers and practitioners.


• Solomon Erkyihun, Tampa Bay Water, "Water Demand Estimation by Incorporating Socio-Economic and Weather Parameters"
Tampa Bay Water (TBW) has unequivocal responsibility to provide safe and adequate water to the six member governments within the tri county region: Pasco, Hillsborough, and Pinellas. With increasing urbanization and population, the demand for water is expected to grow. Classical water demand forecast uses the per capita water demand approach to estimate the future water demand solely based on projected population and associated projected per person water use. However, water demand is driven by such socio-economic variables as income, price, household size, efficiency of water fixtures, and housing density. In addition, weather variables like rainfall and temperature influence the rate of outdoor water use. These factors when applied on different water use sectors such as residential and nonresidential respond differently. Even within the residential sector, the water uses in the detached single family housing units respond differently when compared to the multifamily housing units. These unique sectoral responses call for the need for demand forecast models separate for each sector to realistically represent the rate of sectoral water use and explore how different socio-economic stimuli may influence future water use. These sectoral models together determine the regional water demand in the TBWs’ service areas. These same models, after calibration, estimate the future state of water demand using projected socio-economic and weather parameters as inputs. Due to inherent uncertainties in projected inputs such as the rate of population growth in a given locality, input values to the model were sampled from their underlying probability distribution and are used to generate probabilistic sectoral water use estimates. The resulting demand realizations provide key information about when and how much water is needed in each of the six member governments. The projected probabilistic demand, in tandem with stochastic supply information, and existing capacity, identifies the supply-demand imbalance. This presentation covers one side of the coins in water supply planning.

Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network Part I: Delivering Flood Information to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere

Moderator: Siddharth Saksena

Presenters:

• Shiqi Shiqi, Shams Al Amin, Shiqi Fang, Jessica Levey, Ranji Ranjithan, and Sankar Arumugam, North Carolina State University; Mike Johnson, University of California, Santa Barbara, "Developing an Urban Flood Model for Forecasting Flood Inundation Risks Using SWMM for the City of Wilmington NC"
During hurricane season, major storms have led to significant flooding causing property loss and damage in many urban areas of the United States. There is an urgent need to assess urban inundation in detail which areas have been severely affected. Due to the limited inundation observations, Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) is quite useful and efficient to provide a quantitative assessment of floods (e.g., inundation depth). In this study, we demonstrated the application of SWMM to assess the urban flood inundation risks using observed and 3-day ahead forecasted precipitation for the City of Wilmington NC during three major hurricanes (Matthew 2016; Florence 2018; Dorian 2019). The SWMM, consisting of the city drainage network including stormwater pipelines, channels, and structures, was set up for all the sub-watersheds within the city limits to obtain flood inundation using a LiDAR-derived 3 m resolution digital elevation model (DEM). The model parameters were derived based on the properties of the sub-catchment and the stormwater conduits. Both simulated and forecasted flood inundation corroborates observed flooding patterns with maximum inundation impacts occurring near the UNC-Wilmington campus along Wrightsville Beach during Hurricane Florence. Among all storm events simulations, the eastern side near Greenfield Park had been consistently inundated, which suggested there is a need to improve the drainage system in the area. Combining fine-resolution precipitation forecasts with the urban flood model, SWMM also provides opportunities for utilizing the inundation for emergency planning that include storm network maintenance and for developing community evacuation strategies.


• Lilit Yeghiazarian, University of Cincinnati, "Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network: Delivering Flood Information to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere"
When an urban area gets heavy rainfall, the impact of flooding resulting from this rainfall event is dictated not just by the amount of rainfall, but how the physical infrastructure, such as the stormwater network, power stations and water retaining structures is able to collectively absorb shocks produced by the flooding event. Most often the emergency responders are able to see the impact of rising water levels on humans, but the impact on the urban infrastructure and its interconnected components, and its role in flooding is not visible or understood. To take a holistic approach to understanding the impacts of urban floods so we can mitigate the human and economic losses resulting from, an Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network (UF-OKN), an open and shared infrastructure that provides an information backbone for homeowners, utility operators, and consumers of various urban systems during flooding, is being developed. The UF-OKN merges the state-of-the-art practices in hydrological and hydraulic engineering; systems analysis, optimization & control; computer science; public health; geography; socioeconomics; transportation, civil and electrical engineering to deliver actionable flood information to anyone, anytime and anywhere. The UF-OKN simulates how flood water propagates across the urban systems in a way that provides clear insights about existing and potential flooding problems. This talk will demonstrate the project overview, aims and goals of the UF-OKN, and details on how it is being implemented. This presentation will provide an overview of the UF-OKN including the conceptual framework, its delivery and potential use by multiple stakeholders from general public to government agencies at local, state and federal levels.


• Mike Johnson, UF-OKN, "Achieving Feature-based Continental Flood Inundation Mapping (F-CFIM)"
The Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network (UFOKN) is an open knowledge network that seeks to provide feature focused flood forecasting in a model agnostic and performant way. Here we demonstrate how the UFOKN develops risk points to support the exchange of information between models and known GIS assets, and the capabilities this approach offers to support continental scale risk assessment and flood forecasting. A case study documents how building level flood forecasts can be made at the state level in minutes to provide impact assessments that are GIS, data science, and communication ready. Further we show how the knowledge graph aspects of each risk point allow for extended capabilities including enhanced socioeconomic summaries, cascading impact assessment, and hydrologic relations (e.g., what is downstream).


• Siddharth Saksena, Virginia Tech University, "Future Tools, Functionalities, and Local Applications of the Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network"
The Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network (UFOKN) is a platform to integrate, generate, and disseminate actionable information for flood prediction, response, mitigation, and prevention. The UFOKN simulates how flood water propagates across the urban systems in a way that provides clear insights about existing and potential flooding problems to homeowners, utility operators, and consumers of various urban systems during flooding. This talk will highlight the future tools and functionalities of the UFOKN that are being developed following a human-centered design approach. These tools are being developed on the basis on user feedback through two user workshops. Some examples of these tools include flood hotspot detection, geospatial flood analyst, and flood notification and reporting. It is expected that these tools will be useful to a wide range of personas ranging from emergency responders and stormwater managers to individual business and property owners.

Wastewater and Resource Investment

Moderator: Bishav Bhattarai

Presenters:

• Oluwayinka Adedeji, Rowan University, "Evaluating the Hydrothermal Co-liquefaction of Organic Waste Feedstocks into Biofuel"
The management of clean energy and water is a pressing societal challenge modeled by the Water-Energy Nexus. As cognizance grows around increased energy demand and dwindling fossil fuels, research into sustainable energy sources has increased. Organic waste-producing companies like agricultural, food/beverage, and wastewater treatment plants rely heavily on water producing high levels of waste, making them ideal candidates for bio-oil creation partnerships. Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), a process in which wet, organic biomass is converted into a liquid biocrude at high pressure and temperature, proves viability for converting organic waste into an alternative energy source. Due to varying physical and chemical characteristics of feedstocks such as moisture content and organic content, the objective of this research is to utilize HTL to produce biocrude from co-digestion of organic waste feedstocks including primary sludge (PS), return activated sludge (RAS), winery rose lees (WRL) and brewery trub (BT) in order to optimize these characteristics, and to also conduct a comparative analysis in terms of biocrude yield and toxicity impact of the post-HTL wastewater by-product. The experimental methodology includes raw feedstock characterization; HTL conversion experiment; and characterization of post-HTL products (i.e., biocrude, biochar, and ACP). As-received waste feedstocks showed higher concentrations of moisture content in RAS and PS while BT and WRL showed higher organic content. Post-HTL preliminary results indicate the production of biocrude, along with substantial quantities of ACP. ACP shows high concentrations of nutrients when compared to benchmark wastewaters. It is anticipated that further analysis will elucidate the water impacts of HTL processing.


• Bishav Bhattarai and Ramesh Goel, University of Utah, "Virus-host Interactions in Anaerobic Digester"
Anaerobic digestion is a popular and sustainable waste management option because of its capability of generating renewable energy along with reduction of excess sludge and elimination of pathogens. The syntropy between microbial communities with diverse functional traits- hydrolysis, fermentation, acetogenesis, methanogenesis- enhances the stability of this process. Therefore, understanding the microbial community dynamics in anaerobic digestion is critical for optimizing the process. The stable and nutrient rich condition for microbes in wastewater treatment plants also allows viruses- the most abundant biological entity- to proliferate efficiently. The interaction between virus and their bacterial and archaeal host can lead to several changes in the microbial community and metabolism. Prior to the mortality of the host for nutrient regeneration, viruses can enhance lateral gene transfer and express auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs). The AMGs in viruses can also combine with the host genes to provide novel ecological functions. Therefore, dissecting the characteristics of viruses and their interaction with the microbial communities is equally important to understand the overall microbial mediated process. In this study, metagenome of viral, bacterial, and archaeal community from three anaerobic digesters were extracted. The anaerobic digesters selected included thermophilic and mesophilic digesters. The bacterial, archaeal, and viral community were characterized and using computational approaches the virus- host association was established. The analysis of 16S sequences showed abundance of thermophilic and mesophilic anaerobic organisms including bacteria from genus Cloacimona and Cladicoprobacter. Along with this, the establishment virus-host association using metagenomics can lead to understanding of their interaction. This information can be important to optimize the microbial mediated process and efficient generation of renewable energy. All in all, this study aids to the eliminating the biasness of culturable microorganisms and adds to the growing repository of viruses from engineered bioreactors.


• Bishav Bhattarai and Ramesh Goel, University of Utah; Ananda Shankar Bhattacharee, Sha Wu, and Soklida Hong, "Distributed Metabolism of Partial Nitritation/Anammox (PN/A) Reactor Crippled by Low Temperature"
The partial nitritation (PN) and anaerobic ammonia oxidation (anammox) process is an innovative biotechnological revolution for nitrogen removal. The energy efficiency of these processes has led to its outspread application as a side-stream treatment in wastewater industry. Recently, the implementation of full-scale anammox process-based treatment plants across the world has expanded the applicability of anammox as a mainstream wastewater treatment technology. However, the high-stress susceptibility of PN and anammox process towards fluctuations in temperature is an impediment for full-scale deployment under mainstream conditions. Here, we investigate the response of microbial biofilm for PN-anammox activity to temperature gradients (35°C, 21°C & 13°C). Decrease in temperature lead to decline in average NH+4-N removal. At low temperatures of 13°C the PN-anammox process was deemed unstable with high nitrite (>20mgN L-1). The transcripts of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) were used to investigate the stress response of microbes that perform PN and anammox process. Briefly, a 9-L batch PN/A reactor, fed with treated water from anaerobically digested sludge, was exposed to short term temperature gradients of 35°C, 21°C & 13°C. Specific activity assay, RNA & DNA were extracted from biomass collected at each gradient post acclimatization period. The DNA sequences were assembled & subsequently binned into MAGs. The RNA-Seq data were mapped to the genes of sixty-seven MAGs that were recovered from the PN-anammox reactors. The community-wide expression of genes differed with each temperature. The specific activity (SA) of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) reduced but the transcriptional response (amoA gene) increased at low temperatures. The transcriptional response (hzsA gene) and SA for anammox bacteria reduced at low temperatures. At 13°C, low temperature, the number of MAG genes expressed, reduced by three-folds, crippling the partial nitritation and anammox process. The genome-based analysis reveals that anammox species and other vital microbes differ in their gene expression responses to different temperatures. The metabolic pathways inferred from MAGs indicate that PN-anammox bioreactor microbes are metabolically versatile and exhibited novel opportunities for metabolic cooperation.

Water Wars: What Are they Good For? Eastern US Topics

Moderator: L. Donald Duke

Presenters:

• Lara Fowler, Senior Lecturer, Penn State Law
• Mark Masters, Director, Georgia Water Planning & Policy Center – Albany State University
• Jason Engle, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• Pete Hubbell, Former Executive Director, Southwest Florida Water Management District

A week doesn’t go by without someone saying there are water wars underway or about to kick off. In the West the phrase brings to mind images early skirmishes of miners wielding shovels or gun slingers riding the range. In the East the image has evolved to lawyers climbing the steps to the Supreme Court. How we manage and govern water is critically important to people, the environment, and the economy. During this session we consider the utility of framing our disagreements at war. Must there always be victors and the vanquished? What is the impact of mobilizing for war when the reality of a wicked water problem requires the messiness of working together?

During these sessions we will explore these questions and consider options for new ways of approaching the hard work of water management. Session Two will compare and contrast the Western and Eastern disputes and consider the potential for a complete reframing of the combat mindset to one that better serves the stakeholders and environment.