Environmental Social Sciences Department, Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600Dübendorf, Switzerland.
The Water Center at University of Pennsylvania, The Water Center at Penn, McNeil Building Rm 412, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania19104, United States.
Environ Sci Technol. 2021 Jun 15;55(12):8267-8277. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.0c07947. Epub 2021 May 27.
Scientists are increasingly exploring on-site water systems to supplement conventional centralized water and wastewater infrastructure. While major technological advancements have been achieved, we still lack a systematic view on the non-technical, or institutional, elements that constitute important barriers to the uptake of on-site urban water management systems. This paper presents a conceptual framework distinguishing between institutional barriers in six key dimensions: , , , , , and . The analysis of the existing literature covering these barriers is translated into a typology of the socio-technical complexity of different types of alternative water systems (e.g., non-potable reuse, rainwater systems, and nutrient recovery). Findings show that socio-technical complexity increases with the pollution load in the source water, correlating to potential health risk, and the number of sectors involved in the value chain of an alternative water system. For example, greywater reuse for toilet flushing might have systematically less complex institutional barriers than source separation for agricultural reuse. This study provides practitioners with easily accessible means of understanding non-technical barriers for various types of on-site reuse systems and provides researchers with a conceptual framework for capturing socio-technical complexity in the adoption of alternative water systems.
科学家们越来越多地探索现场水系统，以补充传统的集中式水和废水基础设施。虽然已经取得了重大的技术进步，但我们仍然缺乏对构成现场城市水管理系统采用障碍的非技术或制度因素的系统观点。本文提出了一个区分六个关键维度的体制障碍的概念框架：治理、财务、法律、社会接受度、技术和规划。对涵盖这些障碍的现有文献的分析被转化为不同类型替代水系统（例如，非饮用水再利用、雨水系统和营养物回收）的社会技术复杂性的分类法。研究结果表明，社会技术复杂性随着源水中的污染负荷增加而增加，与潜在的健康风险以及替代水系统价值链中涉及的部门数量相关。例如，用于冲洗厕所的灰水再利用的体制障碍可能比用于农业再利用的源头分离系统简单。本研究为实践者提供了一种易于理解各种现场再利用系统的非技术障碍的方法，并为研究人员提供了一个用于捕获替代水系统采用中的社会技术复杂性的概念框架。
