Erban Laura E, Walker Henry A
Atlantic Coastal Environmental Sciences Division, Center for Environmental Measurement and Modeling, Office of Research and Development, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Narragansett, RI, United States.
Front Built Environ. 2019 Oct 18;5:1-124. doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2019.00124.
Cities are increasingly burdened by aging water infrastructure. Deferred maintenance and upgrades are compounded by emerging concerns over contaminants, extreme weather events, demographic shifts, equity, and affordability of water services. These and other evolving twenty-first century conditions prompt changes to urban water infrastructure and related systems that have wide ranging outcomes. This work demonstrates two complementary techniques for analyzing these complex systems, through the example case of Chicago. Chicago has some of the oldest urban water infrastructure in the US and supplies drinking water to more than 5 million people. Recent efforts to improve the physical and financial components of Chicago's water system have run into a gamut of social and environmental issues. Here, a socio-environmental systems (SES) context for Chicago's water infrastructure is structured using a rigorous systems thinking method and visual grammar to map the SES in terms of distinctions, systems, relationships and perspectives (DSRP). DSRP maps structure information about how water flows through city and how money flows through the public utilities responsible for drinking water delivery, wastewater treatment and stormwater management. Flows are evaluated, using open data and methods, over a 23-year period (1995-2017). Overall declines in water use and wastewater production are accompanied by an increase in the costs of water services, costs that support not only water infrastructure operations, maintenance and capital improvements, but also other municipal functions. Trends in the integrated data are interpreted through iterative refinement of DSRP maps to include additional components and to consider the SES from different points of view. Findings suggest that systems thinking is important for designing urban water system upgrades that are responsive to diverse socio-environmental concerns. As changes are made, transparent, reproducible methods for tracking outcomes can support analysis of differential impacts on users. The methods applied here at the city scale may be used to better understand localized, complex issues surrounding water infrastructure upgrades in Chicago and other cities.
城市老化的供水基础设施所带来的负担日益加重。对污染物、极端天气事件、人口结构变化、公平性以及供水服务可负担性等新出现问题的担忧，使延迟维护和升级的情况更加复杂。这些以及其他21世纪不断演变的状况促使城市供水基础设施及相关系统发生变革，产生了广泛的影响。这项研究通过芝加哥的案例展示了两种用于分析这些复杂系统的互补技术。芝加哥拥有美国一些最古老的城市供水基础设施，为超过500万人提供饮用水。最近改善芝加哥供水系统物理和财务组成部分的努力遇到了一系列社会和环境问题。在此，运用严谨的系统思维方法和视觉语法构建了芝加哥供水基础设施的社会环境系统（SES）框架，以便从区分、系统、关系和视角（DSRP）方面描绘SES。DSRP地图梳理了有关水如何流经城市以及资金如何流经负责饮用水供应、污水处理和雨水管理的公共事业部门的信息。利用公开数据和方法，对23年期间（1995 - 2017年）的水流进行了评估。用水和废水产量的总体下降伴随着供水服务成本的增加，这些成本不仅用于供水基础设施的运营、维护和资本改善，还用于其他市政职能。通过对DSRP地图进行迭代细化，纳入更多组成部分并从不同角度考虑SES，对综合数据中的趋势进行了解读。研究结果表明，系统思维对于设计能应对各种社会环境问题的城市供水系统升级至关重要。随着变革的推进，用于跟踪结果的透明、可重复方法能够支持对用户差异影响的分析。这里在城市层面应用的方法可用于更好地理解芝加哥及其他城市围绕供水基础设施升级的局部复杂问题。
