
Urbanization and the Challenges for the Water Supply
By 2030, 5 billion people will be living in urban areas. Water supply systems will need to be adjusted in order to accommodate the growing number of citizens, especially in rapidly growing cities – this is a challenge addressed in several Global Sustainable Development goals.
Our research focuses on the analysis and optimization of urban structures and infrastructures, especially of the water supply infrastructure. Through our multifaceted portfolio of , we have a broad overview of the current challenges that the urban water supply systems face. On the one hand, we study water supply of all city districts with a special focus on deprived urban areas (also known as informal settlements or slums) and their cost-efficient access to water. On the other hand, we optimize urban water supply infrastructures under the consideration of resilience and dynamic development of water demand. We study the water supply network as a part of a complex, interdependent system of multiple critical infrastructures and assess its ability to react to and recover from disruptions. research projects
Our research endeavors are guided by . For the analysis of the urban structures and infrastructures, we use GIS data. The major focus lies on the mathematical optimization of infrastructures under the consideration of the underlying technical relations. Moreover, our resilience analysis is based on established and refined resilience metrics. methodologic approaches