Systems Analysis of Zaragoza Urban Water - SWITCH - Managing ...

Systems Analysis of Zaragoza UWS
Guillermo Penagos
f. Skilled and sufficient staff: to operate and maintain the system. But also
personal with knowledge on microbiology, chemistry and ecology. Gender
diversity is also required.
g. Social dimension: the service should be socially and culturally acceptable
h. Public awareness: on sustainable behavior
This work has quantitatively analyzed the aspects a. and d. of Zaragoza UWS. One
important aspect that has been neglected in this research is the water infrastructure,
which is determinant for sustainable urban planning in terms of scale, use of space
and longevity (Lundin & Morrison, 2002). Nevertheless for the SWITCH project it
might be interesting to evaluate, for instance, the environmental impacts and the long
time perspective of the ongoing projects on infrastructure upgrading in Zaragoza.
5.2 LCA as a tool for Sustainability assessment
The methodology used for this research is based on the LCA methodology, that is
being extensively used to assess environmental sustainability of Urban Water
Systems and it has proven to be very useful. However it has got some important
drawbacks as well. For instance some authors criticize the fact that it overlooks
important geographic variations such as the resilience of receiving water, also some
qualitative aspects, such as sludge quality or ecosystem health are difficult to assess
with LCA. Finally, water consumption is not incorporated in the analysis, therefore, it
can be considered as a useful tool, but complementary information should also be
included for a more complete approach to evaluate urban sustainability (Lundin,
1999)
The present work evaluated the sustainability aspects of water extraction, but also
resource consumption and pollution impacts. Such values are presented as
indicators for environmental sustainability with the main purpose of providing
comprehensive and quantitative information to decision makers in Zaragoza.
5.3 Sustainability Indicators
There are many indicators that are currently being used by water organizations
around the world to assess their performance and they are suggested to be
sustainability indicators but only few actually are (Lundin and Morrison, 2002). For
instance percentages of pollution removal at WWT facilities are often suggested as
sustainability indicators but those provide information only about the performance of
existing end-of-pipe technologies. Percentages of removal can for instance remain
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