Is our urban water system still sustainable? A simple statistical test with complexity science insight

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111748Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This paper proposes a new methodology for monitoring sustainability of urban water systems.

  • Normality of the system is inferred from normality of its supporting inputs.

  • Supporting inputs are intents and behaviors that support system goals.

  • Normality of supporting inputs is inferred from their longitudinally normal distribution.

  • Fourteen supporting inputs and their quantitative indicators are identified for significance tests.

Abstract

Sustainable development is being reconsidered as a process with unknown endpoint. Outputs of sustainable urban water systems defined as ‘policies, projects, laws, technologies, and consumption and reuse amounts associated with urban water sustainability goals’ are therefore being viewed as inadequate monitoring instruments. I propose a new methodology for sustainability monitoring whereby normality of a system is diagnosed through normality of its supporting inputs in lieu of normality of its complex outputs. Supporting inputs are ‘intents and behaviors that support system goals’. Supporting inputs follow a principle of self-organization to remain in the norm and behavior zone commonly associated with system goals. This implies that normality of supporting inputs can be inferred from their longitudinally normal or Gaussian distribution that can be explored by significance tests; in particular, the Shapiro-Wilk test which is most powerful for n < 50. We identify fourteen supporting inputs of sustainable urban water systems - such as internet searches, community campaigns, staff training, agent-principal reporting and legislation propositions about water sustainability – and define quantitative indicators for them. The Shapiro-Wilk test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (K–S) of these indicators and a subsequent Boxplot outlying examination of non-normal indicators are undertaken in Yazd – a desert city in central Iran with a historic record in water conservation – in the light of its complex wastewater speculation. Qualitative examination of non-normal supporting inputs confirms the ability of our statistical methodology to detect problems in the system.

Section snippets

Monitoring urban water sustainability amid uncertainty

One of the greatest challenges of this century is to secure enough fresh water for the world's increasing population (Harlan et al., 2009) of which 55% live in urban areas (United Nations, 2018). Sustainable urban water management seeks to overcome this challenge and preserve water resources for future generations through local source diversification (e.g. rainwater harvest), and fresh water demand reduction via efficient use and reuse (Marlow et al., 2013; Tortajada, 2020). Its effectiveness

Theoretical and methodological framework

A system may be defined as a set of components which interact in a regular, interdependent manner to meet particular goals (Jain and Singh, 2003). We build systems like urban water, transportation and healthcare to enable self-organization of complex supporting, provisioning and regulating services. Normality of these systems means that they continue to self-organize towards their original goals such as water sustainability (Scheffer et al., 2009). Monitoring normality is fundamental to

Background

Located in central Iran, Yazd Province is inhabited by over 1,300,000 people of which more than 80% are urban. Yazd is the driest center of urban population north of the Persian Gulf coast with a yearly precipitation amount of 49 mm and only 23 days of precipitation. However, Yazd's urbanization dates back to the Sasanian Empire before the arrival of Islam in the mid seventh century AD. Known as ‘City of Windcatchers’ and ‘City of Qanats’, Yazd has been praised by international scholars and

Conclusions

This study searched for new ways of monitoring sustainability that acknowledge emergence in complex systems whereby something mysterious happens when things come together (Cilliers et al., 2013). Such new ways should therefore address our limitation in monitoring system outputs such as wastewater speculation which can be viewed as both normal and non-normal with different assumptions about its long term function in water sustainability.

I proposed an alternative methodology for monitoring urban

Credit author statement

Abbas Ziafati Bafarasat: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Roles/Writing - original draft; Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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