Sustainable Cities – Infrastructure and Technologies for Water: A select annotated bibliography on water related resources   Tags: english, sustainable resources, water, water management, water resources  

As countries continue to grow and urbanise, the search for cost-effective and sustainable water solutions becomes more important. In recent years, a full-blown technology race has emerged in pursuit of more affordable and energy-efficient ways to produce clean drinking water for the community.

While good infrastructure facilitates accessibility to clean water, it is often the mismanagement and lack of planning that has resulted in a dwindling supply of clean water worldwide. It is therefore important for water agencies to focus on the proper planning and management of water resources.

Providing high quality potable water is also becoming a challenge due to increasing pollution and higher standards of potable water required by World Health Organisation (WHO) and USEPA*. It is hence imperative that good water safety management plans, and new analytical methods are used to tackle these concerns.

To ensure good, clean drinking water for Singapore, PUB, the national water agency has adopted an integrated water management approach to put in place a long-term water supply strategy known as the Four National Taps, comprising water from local catchments, imported water, reclaimed water (branded NEWater in Singapore) and desalinated water. By leveraging on technology, PUB was able to successfully harness NEWater and desalinated water as alternative sources of water. Further boosting Singapore’s water supply is the Marina Barrage which was officially opened last year. With its completion, Singapore’s 15th reservoir and its first in the city centre is formed, meeting 10% of Singapore’s water needs. Besides water supply, the Marina Barrage is also a flood control mechanism and provides a venue for lifestyle activities. Both the Marina Barrage and the development of NEWater exemplify how the use of infrastructure and technology are critical in ensuring a sustainable water supply for cities.

This bibliography introduces resources focusing on the themes of ‘Sustainable Cities: Infrastructure and Technologies for Water’. It covers a spread of resources including books, journal articles (from databases), web articles, websites and patents. The work represents a current scan of known available resources and should be taken as an introduction to the topic and is not meant to be an exhaustive coverage.

* USEPA. Retrieved March 09 2009 from http://www.epa.gov/waterinfrastructure/