When does infrastructure hybridisation outperform centralised infrastructure paradigms? – Exploring economic and hydraulic impacts of decentralised urban wastewater system expansion

Abstract

We explore the dynamics of centralised and decentralised wastewater infrastructure across various scenarios and introduce novel insights into their performance regarding structural vulnerability, hydraulic capacity, and costs. This study determines circumstances under which infrastructure hybridisation outperforms traditional centralised infrastructure paradigms. We combined system analysis to map out the modelling problem with the model-based exploration of the transition space using the novel TURN-Sewers model. System diagramming was used to identify the parameters or combinations of parameters that significantly influence the performance indicators being assessed. This allowed the creation of relevant simulation scenarios to identify circumstances where a decentralised sewer system could outperform a centralised one. TURN-Sewers was applied to model the infrastructure maintenance and generation of new infrastructure over 20 years for a municipality on the Swiss Plateau, considering a population growth rate of 0.03 a⁻¹. Results show that decentralisation in expansion areas with higher densification can outperform the hydraulic performance and structural vulnerability of expanding centralised sanitary wastewater infrastructure. Decentralised systems can also offer economic advantages when capital expenditure costs for small-scale wastewater treatment plants are significantly reduced compared to current costs, particularly at higher discount rates, e.g. reaping effects of economies of scale. The findings of this study emphasise the potential of transition pathways towards decentralisation in urban water infrastructures and the value of models that allow the exploration of this transition space.