Water user survey on expectations of service in Guelph, ON, Canada

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Dziedzic ◽  
B. W. Karney

A survey was developed and conducted with residential water users in the City of Guelph, ON, Canada, with the objective of assessing their awareness, preferences, concerns, motivations, and priorities. The overall goal of this data is to improve the water system on different fronts: infrastructure, conservation programs, communication with users, and long-term strategies. Results highlight the local concerns with water scarcity, currently addressed by conservation programs, as well as water quality, aging infrastructure, and costs. Correlations between user type and answers were seldom found, showing that different residential customer segments share concerns and motivations. Even so, feedback must be sought from all customer segments, residential as well as industrial, commercial, and institutional, through different channels. The findings will allow the utility to identify preferred solutions to current issues and openness to change, as well as gaps in user and utility knowledge.

Author(s):  
N. Caradot ◽  
Ph. R. Sampaio ◽  
A. S. Guilbert ◽  
H. Sonnenberg ◽  
V. Parez ◽  
...  

Abstract Most cities face the problem of an aging infrastructure in need of extensive and ongoing repair, renovation or replacement. Since the 1980's, CCTV is the industry standard for sewer system inspection and the main source of information for structural performance evaluation. Due to low inspection rates and the lack of information about sewer condition, deterioration models have been developed to simulate the condition of non-inspected sewers and assess the influence of several rehabilitation scenarios. This paper presents an innovative modelling tool for long-term sewer rehabilitation planning based on the integration of a deterioration and a rehabilitation model. The tool is demonstrated in full scale using CCTV and sewer data of the city of Sofia, in Bulgaria. Results provide tangible proofs of investments needs for sewer rehabilitation and support the utility in the negotiation of budgets with the municipality. Since age is a one of key variable for deterioration modelling, a new method is proposed to estimate missing construction years in the utility database with a prediction error of less than 7 years.


Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-207
Author(s):  
CHERYL BRADBEE

ABSTRACTThe political ecology of historical urban water systems can yield information on the long-term, social organization of resource infrastructure and its management. In this article, the water system of Piacenza, Italy, is examined through its history and the documents of the Congregazione sopra l'ornato, the committee in charge of water management in the city, under the Farnese dukes, from 1545 to 1736. The documents include letters from residents, responses and orders from the committee, tax documents and engineering reports. These records tell a story of a water system and its relationship to the city residents.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
R. D. Oktyabrskiy

The article is devoted to the justification of the need to reduce the population density in the residential development of cities. The analysis of vulnerability of the urban population from threats of emergency situations of peace and war time, and also an assessment of provision of the city by a road network is given. Proposals have been formulated to reduce the vulnerability of the urban population in the long term and to eliminate traffic congestion and congestion — jams.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sarah Hackett

Drawing upon a collection of oral history interviews, this paper offers an insight into entrepreneurial and residential patterns and behaviour amongst Turkish Muslims in the German city of Bremen. The academic literature has traditionally argued that Turkish migrants in Germany have been pushed into self-employment, low-quality housing and segregated neighbourhoods as a result of discrimination, and poor employment and housing opportunities. Yet the interviews reveal the extent to which Bremen’s Turkish Muslims’ performances and experiences have overwhelmingly been the consequences of personal choices and ambitions. For many of the city’s Turkish Muslim entrepreneurs, self-employment had been a long-term objective, and they have succeeded in establishing and running their businesses in the manner they choose with regards to location and clientele, for example. Similarly, interviewees stressed the way in which they were able to shape their housing experiences by opting which districts of the city to live in and by purchasing property. On the whole, they perceive their entrepreneurial and residential practices as both consequences and mediums of success, integration and a loyalty to the city of Bremen. The findings are contextualised within the wider debate regarding the long-term legacy of Germany’s post-war guest-worker system and its position as a “country of immigration”.


2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. Loiacono ◽  
Chu-Fei H. Ho ◽  
Natalie V. Sierra ◽  
Domènec Jolis ◽  
Carolyn Chiu ◽  
...  

The City and County of San Francisco (“City”) embarked upon a 30-year master planning process in part prompted by public concerns related to the neighbourhood impacts of the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant (SEP). The Sewer System Master Plan, as it is called, developed a long term Integrated Urban Watershed Management Plan for the City's treatment plants and collection system. This paper focuses on the planning framework and public input to the process, particularly as it relates to proposed changes to the SEP. The resulting improvements address issues of replacing aging infrastructure, eliminating odor emissions, and visually screening the treatment plants that are situated within an urban setting. The recommended project addresses the needed repair of the existing infrastructure; and proposes that the City move towards an integrated urban watershed approach, initially through localized rainwater harvesting and opportunistic water reclamation.


Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 949
Author(s):  
Salman Qureshi ◽  
Saman Nadizadeh Shorabeh ◽  
Najmeh Neysani Samany ◽  
Foad Minaei ◽  
Mehdi Homaee ◽  
...  

Due to irregular and uncontrolled expansion of cities in developing countries, currently operational landfill sites cannot be used in the long-term, as people will be living in proximity to these sites and be exposed to unhygienic circumstances. Hence, this study aims at proposing an integrated approach for determining suitable locations for landfills while considering their physical expansion. The proposed approach utilizes the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) to weigh the sets of identified landfill location criteria. Furthermore, the weighted linear combination (WLC) approach was applied for the elicitation of the proper primary locations. Finally, the support vector machine (SVM) and cellular automation-based Markov chain method were used to predict urban growth. To demonstrate the applicability of the developed approach, it was applied to a case study, namely the city of Mashhad in Iran, where suitable sites for landfills were identified considering the urban growth in different geographical directions for this city by 2048. The proposed approach could be of use for policymakers, urban planners, and other decision-makers to minimize uncertainty arising from long-term resource allocation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4096
Author(s):  
Jozefína Pokrývková ◽  
Ľuboš Jurík ◽  
Lenka Lackóová ◽  
Klaudia Halászová ◽  
Richard Hanzlík ◽  
...  

The water management of cities and villages faces many challenges. Aging infrastructure systems operate for many years after their theoretical lifetime (operation) with a very high need for reconstruction and repair. The solution is proper rainwater management. The investigated area is part of the cadastral area of the Nitra city. This article is based on the use of geographic information systems (GIS) as tools in proposing water retention measures that are needed to improve the microenvironment of the city. We proceeded in several steps, which consisted of area analysis, survey, surface runoff calculations in urbanized areas, proposal of a suitable solution for given location. For real possibilities of rainwater management procedures, a new site on the outskirts of the city was selected. In the given locality, it was possible to use water infiltration as a solution. The locality has suitable conditions of land ownership, pedological conditions, the slope of the area and also the interest of the inhabitants in the ecological solution. The outlined study indicates the need to continue research on the reliability of rainwater management practices.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7533
Author(s):  
Jakub Bil ◽  
Bartłomiej Buława ◽  
Jakub Świerzawski

The article describes the risks for the mental health and wellbeing of urban-dwellers in relation to changes in the spatial structure of a city that could be caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. A year of lockdown has changed the way of life in the city and negated its principal function as a place of various meetings and social interactions. The danger of long-term isolation and being cut-off from an urban lifestyle is not only a challenge facing individuals, but it also creates threats on various collective levels. Hindered interpersonal relations, stress, and the fear of another person lower the quality of life and may contribute to the development of mental diseases. Out of fear against coronavirus, part of the society has sought safety by moving out of the densely populated city centres. The dangerous results of these phenomena are shown by research based on the newest literature regarding the influence of COVID-19 and the lockdown on mental health, urban planning, and the long-term spatial effects of the pandemic such as the urban sprawl. The breakdown of the spatial structure, the loosening of the urban tissue, and urban sprawl are going to increase anthropopressure, inhibit access to mental health treatment, and will even further contribute to the isolation of part of the society. In addition, research has shown that urban structure loosening as a kind of distancing is not an effective method in the fight against the SARS-COV pandemic. Creating dense and effective cities through the appropriate management of development during and after the pandemic may be a key element that will facilitate the prevention of mental health deterioration and wellbeing. It is also the only possibility to achieve the selected Sustainable Development Goals, which as of today are under threat.


2019 ◽  
Vol 128 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-591
Author(s):  
Leo Joseph ◽  
Alex Drew ◽  
Ian J Mason ◽  
Jeffrey L Peters

Abstract We reassessed whether two parapatric non-sister Australian honeyeater species (Aves: Meliphagidae), varied and mangrove honeyeaters (Gavicalis versicolor and G. fasciogularis, respectively), that diverged from a common ancestor c. 2.5 Mya intergrade in the Townsville area of north-eastern Queensland. Consistent with a previous specimen-based study, by using genomics methods we show one-way gene flow for autosomal but not Z-linked markers from varied into mangrove honeyeaters. Introgression barely extends south of the area of parapatry in and around the city of Townsville. While demonstrating the long-term porosity of species boundaries over several million years, our data also suggest a clear role of sex chromosomes in maintaining reproductive isolation.


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