scholarly journals Uncertainty-based flood resiliency evaluation of wastewater treatment plants

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 990-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Karamouz ◽  
E. Rasoulnia ◽  
Z. Zahmatkesh ◽  
M. A. Olyaei ◽  
A. Baghvand
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Wastewater Treatment Plants ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Unified Index ◽  
Range Of Variation

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have a significant role in urban systems’ serviceability. These infrastructures, especially in coastal regions, are vulnerable to flooding. To minimize vulnerability, a better understanding of flood risk must be realized. To quantify the extent of efforts for flood risk management, a unified index is needed for evaluating resiliency as a key concept in understanding vulnerability. Here, a framework is developed to evaluate the resiliency of WWTPs in coastal areas of New York City. An analysis of the current understanding of vulnerability is performed and a new perspective utilizing different components including resourcefulness, robustness, rapidity, and redundancy is presented to quantify resiliency using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique. To investigate the effect of certain factors of WWTPs on resiliency, uncertainty analysis is also incorporated in developing the framework. As a result, rather than a single value, a range of variation for each WWTP's resiliency is obtained. Finally, improvement of WWTPs’ performance is investigated by allocating financial resources. The results show the significant value of quantifying and improving resiliency that could be used in development of investment strategies. Consideration of uncertainty in the analysis is of great worth to estimate the potential room for improvement of resiliency of individual WWTPs.

Critical modeling parameters identified for 3D CFD modeling of rectangular final settling tanks for New York City wastewater treatment plants

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 1087-1094 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Ramalingam ◽  
S. Xanthos ◽  
M. Gong ◽  
J. Fillos ◽  
K. Beckmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
York City ◽  
Wastewater Treatment Plants ◽  
Settling Tank ◽  
Cfd Modeling ◽  
Cfd Model ◽  
Conventional Activated Sludge ◽  
City College

New York City Environmental Protection is in the process of incorporating biological nitrogen removal (BNR) in its wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) which entails operating the aeration tanks with higher levels of mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) than a conventional activated sludge process. The objective of this paper is to discuss two of the important parameters introduced in the 3D CFD model that has been developed by the City College of New York (CCNY) group: (a) the development of the ‘discrete particle’ measurement technique to carry out the fractionation of the solids in the final settling tank (FST) which has critical implications in the prediction of the effluent quality; and (b) the modification of the floc aggregation (KA) and floc break-up (KB) coefficients that are found in Parker's flocculation equation (Parker et al. 1970, 1971) used in the CFD model. The dependence of these parameters on the predictions of the CFD model will be illustrated with simulation results on one of the FSTs at the 26th Ward WWTP in Brooklyn, NY.

scholarly journals Initial Mapping of the New York City Wastewater Virome

mSystems ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Gulino ◽  
J. Rahman ◽  
M. Badri ◽  
J. Morton ◽  
R. Bonneau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Wastewater Treatment Plants ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Metagenomic Data ◽  
Functional Importance ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Viral Communities ◽  
Local Sampling

ABSTRACT Bacteriophages are abundant members of all microbiomes studied to date, influencing microbial communities through interactions with their bacterial hosts. Despite their functional importance and ubiquity, phages have been underexplored in urban environments compared to their bacterial counterparts. We profiled the viral communities in New York City (NYC) wastewater using metagenomic data collected in November 2014 from 14 wastewater treatment plants. We show that phages accounted for the largest viral component of the sewage samples and that specific virus communities were associated with local environmental conditions within boroughs. The vast majority of the virus sequences had no homology matches in public databases, forming an average of 1,700 unique virus clusters (putative genera). These new clusters contribute to elucidating the overwhelming proportion of data that frequently goes unidentified in viral metagenomic studies. We assigned potential hosts to these phages, which appear to infect a wide range of bacterial genera, often outside their presumed host. We determined that infection networks form a modular-nested pattern, indicating that phages include a range of host specificities, from generalists to specialists, with most interactions organized into distinct groups. We identified genes in viral contigs involved in carbon and sulfur cycling, suggesting functional importance of viruses in circulating pathways and gene functions in the wastewater environment. In addition, we identified virophage genes as well as a nearly complete novel virophage genome. These findings provide an understanding of phage abundance and diversity in NYC wastewater, previously uncharacterized, and further examine geographic patterns of phage-host association in urban environments. IMPORTANCE Wastewater is a rich source of microbial life and contains bacteria, viruses, and other microbes found in human waste as well as environmental runoff sources. As part of an effort to characterize the New York City wastewater metagenome, we profiled the viral community of sewage samples across all five boroughs of NYC and found that local sampling sites have unique sets of viruses. We focused on bacteriophages, or viruses of bacteria, to understand how they may influence the microbial ecology of this system. We identified several new clusters of phages and successfully associated them with bacterial hosts, providing insight into virus-host interactions in urban wastewater. This study provides a first look into the viral communities present across the wastewater system in NYC and points to their functional importance in this environment.

scholarly journals Comprehensive Flood Risk Assessment for Wastewater Treatment Plants under Extreme Storm Events: A Case Study for New York City, United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 6694
Author(s):  
Qing Sun ◽  
Rouzbeh Nazari ◽  
Maryam Karimi ◽  
MD Golam Rabbani Fahad ◽  
Robert W. Peters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
New York ◽  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Wastewater Treatment Plants ◽  
Storm Surges ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Flood Risk Assessment

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the City of New York, United States, are particularly vulnerable to frequent extreme weather events, including storm surges, high-intensity rainfall, and sea level rise, and are also affected by the cascade of these events. The complex structural configuration of WWTPs requires very fine-scale flood risk assessment, which current research has not pursued. We propose a robust technique to quantify the risk of inundations for the fourteen WWPTs through an automated sub-basin creation tool; 889 sub-basins were generated and merged with high-resolution building footprint data to create a comprehensive database for flood inundation analysis. The inundation depths and extents for the WWTPs and flood-prone regions were identified from hydrodynamic modeling of storm surge and sea level rise. The economic damage due to flooding for the WWTPs was also quantified using the HAZUS-MH model. Results indicated that the storm surges from various categories of hurricanes have the dominant impacts on flood depths around WWTPs, followed by high-intensity rainfall. Sea level rise was shown to have a relatively minor impact on flood depths. Results from economic damage analysis showed that the WWTPs are subjected to damage ranging from USD 60,000 to 720,000, depending on the size of the WWTP and the extremity of storm surge. The method of analyzing the inundation status of the research object through the sub-basin enables more accurate data to be obtained when calculating the runoff. It allows for a clearer view of the inundation status of the WWTPs when combined with the actual buildings. Using this database, predicting flood conditions of any extreme event or a cascade of extreme events can be conducted quickly and accurately.

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