Sustainable Urban Water Management System in Palomino, Colombia. An Urban Water Metabolism Approach

This master thesis is an attempt to contribute to the understanding of urban water systems through the use of the urban metabolism (UM) framework. By developing steady-state models with STAN, a software used for material flow analysis (MFA), the urban water flows are quantified and analyzed as they enter the system boundary and are transformed by anthropogenic processes. Such a model has been applied to a specific urban water system in the town of Palomino, Colombia, to research the main barriers and opportunities for a sustainable urban water system. The area under study corresponds to a system boundary of 4.83 km2, and the analysis was performed for the year 2015. A detailed examination of Palomino’s water system was established based on primary data collection through survey processes, mapping, and semi-structured interviews. Based on the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the water system, a conceptual urban water metabolism (UWM) model was created to identify the critical flows of the water system through a monthly (31-day) analysis based on fourteen scenarios, each including four variables: Touristic season, Hours without electricity per month, Percentage of water losses due to pipelines leaks, and Percentage of water losses due to user’s behavior. Subsequently, a definition of sustainable urban water management system (SUWMS) was generated based on a literature review and an industrial ecology perspective, wherein the system is analyzed using a holistic, system thinking approach. Guided by the SUWMS definition and the local conditions of Palomino’s urban water system, various sustainable water technologies and initiatives are introduced as a set of potential solutions to shift the current water system towards a SUWMS. Finally, the potential of the sustainable water supply technique of rainwater harvesting to influence the current UWM of Palomino was assessed by identifying changes in the UWM for three key years: 1969, a year of extreme rainfall; 1997, a year of El Niño phenomenon ...