Lisbon, Portugal

Description

Lisbon has a smart management strategy for all key areas of urban development. The city aims at providing high quality of life for a growing population and economy, whilst tackling climate change challenges based on a green-blue problem-solving infrastructure. As such, the key actions targeted by the Lisbon Living Lab (Lisbon LL) are improving the city’s water-smartness while increasing green areas by promoting water reuse in water demand/supply management for non-potable uses, water-energy-phosphorus efficiency, and housing more adapted to climate-change. Expected impacts are (i) reducing the use of freshwater and drinking water for non-potable uses, (ii) improving water-energy nexus, and (iii) supporting safe water reuse.

Within the Lisbon LL, the innovations deployed towards water circularity include six digital tools, and a technological solution for the direct potable reuse in beverage industry:

• The Water-Energy-Phosphorus Balance Planning Module (tool #25) is a matchmaking environment conceived and designed entirely for B-WaterSmart, where water sources and demand points are combined to enable the design of supply solutions to a set of potential users of reclaimed water. The supply and demand alternative combinations are assessed and matched through a range of user-selected metrics (e.g., volume availability, cost, energy content, carbon footprint, nutrient content) over a targeted period. The alternative combinations produced are further made available to Tools #24, #27 and #17.
• The Risk Assessment for Urban Water Reuse (tool #27) is a user-friendly risk assessment framework for water reuse in non-potable uses based on the relevant ISO standards (ISO 20426:2018, ISO 16075-1:2020 and ISO 16075-2:2020) and the Regulation (EU) 2020/741 on minimum requirements for water reuse. It evaluates human health and environmental (groundwater and surface water) risks incurred by the supply/demand combinations developed in Tool #25. Each alternative tested for human risk and for environmental risk undergoes a sequence of steps and receives a risk grade. Depending on the targeted risk level, the alternative will either be rejected (and potentially returned to tool #25 for redesign) or approved and forwarded to Tool #17.
• The Reclaimed Water Quality Model in the Distribution Network (tool #24) is a complete hydraulic and water quality extended-period simulation model for pressure flow networks. By modelling the (bulk and wall) decay of residual chlorine, the key barrier for water microbial stability, it aims primarily at mapping and quantifying risk in reclaimed water distribution networks.
• The Environment for Decision Support and Selection of Alternative Courses of Action (tool #17) is an intuitive numerical and visual decisional environment that enables non-experts to easily comprehend the decisional problem involved in prioritizing and to make decisions based on factual evidence/data. It is tailored to the decisional problem laid out by tool #25, which produces candidate supply/demand combinations (further qualified by Tools #24 and #27).
• The Climate Readiness Certification (CRC) Tool (#33) can be applied to residential and small service/commercial buildings, as well as to “neighbourhoods” considering both buildings and outdoor areas within the frontier established for the certification object. Each certificate has four classifications, from F (worst) to A+ (the best): one global classification, and one sub-classification for each evaluated dimension, Water Efficiency, Water-Energy Nexus, and Climate Adaptation.
• The Urban Water Cycle Observatory (tool #20) is a data repository for the utilities and instrument for engaging the stakeholders and the society. It includes two complementary tools: (a) a public access tool, with open data information of the water and wastewater city dimensions (top-down approach) and (b) a private access tool, for individual entities integrate and analyse, via a set of analytics, the water consumption data of their facilities (bottom-up approach).
• Protocol for safe potable reuse in the beverage industry (technology #1) to produce knowledge, both on the water quality requirements and on the reclamation technologies (ultrafiltration, ozonation, reverse osmosis and biologically active activated carbon filter), based on a pilot demo of different reclamation schemes. The aim is to provide scientific evidence of the secure use of reclaimed water for potable use in the beverage industry and to increase the social acceptance to this alternative water source.