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Hybrid wastewater treatment and reuse enhances urban water system resilience to disruptive incidents

Nature Water volume 1, pages 1048–1058 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Water and wastewater systems are critical infrastructure whose disruption directly threatens public health, economic growth and the reliability and functionality of other critical infrastructure. Hybrid urban water supply systems that combine conventional, centralized water sources with distributed reclaimed wastewater offer potential energy savings and reduced freshwater use. Here we show that such hybrid water supply systems are also more resilient than conventional centralized systems. Using Houston’s municipal water system as a case study, we explore the resilience of hybrid systems compared with centralized ones under various disruptions including pump station failures, pipe leakage and source water contamination. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the hybrid configuration demonstrates lower severity, impact range and downtime during substandard performance, especially benefiting low-pressure areas vulnerable to disruptions. We also identified vulnerable components in the current system along with appropriate mitigation strategies that account for local geographical constraints. These findings emphasize the imperative of considering alternative system configurations to safeguard water infrastructure and mitigate risks efficiently.

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Fig. 1: System-level WSA over the simulation period for current and hybrid systems under four Pump_outage scenarios.
Fig. 2: Spatial distribution of time-averaged WSA.
Fig. 3: WSA index for all Pipe_leak scenarios and total population impacted over the simulation period.
Fig. 4: Ranking of pipes and distribution of pipe vulnerability.
Fig. 5: Spatial distribution and time series of contaminant concentration for current and hybrid systems.
Fig. 6: Spatial distribution of time-averaged contaminant concentration under the Water_contaminant—Northeast, East and Southeast scenarios.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Houston Public Works, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study and so are not publicly available. Data are, however, available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Houston Public Works.

Code availability

The software and custom-developed code for this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation (award number CBET-1707117, Q.L., L.D.-O. and L.S.) and NEWT: National Science Foundation (NSF) Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (award number EEC-1449500, Q.L.). We thank P. Pradhan and F. Rabbi from Houston Public Works for providing some of the data used in this study. We also thank M. Bynum, D. Hart and K. Klise from the Sandia National Laboratories for providing technical support for WNTR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

    Lu Liu

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Xiangnan Zhou, Leonardo Dueñas-Osorio, Lauren Stadler & Qilin Li

  3. Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT), Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Qilin Li

  4. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Qilin Li

  5. Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Rice Univeresity, Houston, TX, USA

    Qilin Li

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Contributions

L.L. conducted the research, analysed the results and wrote the manuscript with help from X.Z., who supported the backbone network development. L.D.-O., L.S. and Q.L. provided supervision and significant critical intellectual input. All authors planned the study, designed the research and contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qilin Li.

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Liu, L., Zhou, X., Dueñas-Osorio, L. et al. Hybrid wastewater treatment and reuse enhances urban water system resilience to disruptive incidents. Nat Water 1, 1048–1058 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00166-6

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