Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus risks, the invited speaker had to cancel his visit to Canada.
Title of the conference: “Global modelling of water systems - how can modelling and simulation contribute to sustainable water management?” (Presentation in English)
Speaker: Dr. Manfred Schuetze, Deputy Head of Water and Energy Department at the Institut für Automation und Kommunikation, en Allemagne.
Summary: “Modelling and simulation has been applied - and is being applied - for improved water and wastewater management for long time by researchers and practitioners worldwide. Whilst often focus is on particular processes and specific elements of the water system - such as detailed modellling of biochemical processes in activated sludge plants (to mention just one example) -, it also might lead, despite that often such modelling exercises are useful and necessary, to "getting lost" in detail. This holds even more true when considering the entire wastewater system, or even the entire water cycle, as one system. Furthermore, in recent years an assessment of solutions or potential options is desired to consider a range of different aspects of sustainability, and methods such as Life Cycle Assessment are often advocated.
The presentation provides an overview of some of the research and application project currently being carried out at the Department of Water and Energy at ifak. This includes holistic modelling of the urban water system, putting particular emphasis on altenative water sources, such as rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse. An approach to combine simulation modelling with aspects of Life Cycle Analyses is presented and proves to be useful for application in practice. Along similar lines, also the assessment of new and alternative sanitation systems, thus supporting related discussion and decision processes, is possible. Finally, such modelling concepts are applied to analyse urban agglomerations with their complex interactions of water, energy, waste, and food systems.”
