Sustainable Urban Wastewater Systems and Greywater Policy

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Description
This dissertation focuses on three studies related to sustainable urban wastewater systems and greywater policy. The research aims to address technical, regulatory, and social gaps in sustainable urban wastewater systems and greywater policy through research and innovation, adopting a holistic,…

This dissertation focuses on three studies related to sustainable urban wastewater systems and greywater policy. The research aims to address technical, regulatory, and social gaps in sustainable urban wastewater systems and greywater policy through research and innovation, adopting a holistic, systems perspective to realize the water security, environmental, and social benefits of greywater reuse. The main research question is: How can greywater treatment technologies and greywater reuse policies contribute to sustainable urban water systems based on the SETs (Social-Ecological-Technological Systems) framework?The first study conducted a systematic literature review of urban wastewater, covering historical sources, treatment technologies, recycling, and reuse. It summarized the theoretical framework based on the review and developed a conceptual framework for greywater treatment technologies based on the SETs framework, which can support the development of sustainable cities. The second study focused on the public perception of greywater reuse in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods, the study found that city residents have a strong positive perception of and support for greywater reuse, suggesting that the barriers and challenges of public perception can be overcome. The third study examined greywater reuse policies in Arizona and California. It interviewed residents and policymakers and conducted a policy analysis to reveal the implementation benefits, management obstacles, technical restrictions, and challenges of greywater reuse policies in the two states. The study provides recommendations for redesigning greywater policies and improving greywater reuse policies. The dissertation concludes that greywater reuse policies should be informed by the new knowledge from the three studies to establish sustainable water use practices and design greywater reuse regulations and technologies that encourage safe and responsible greywater reuse in urban design. It emphasizes the need to increase economic data on greywater use and public investment to provide better economic costs and benefits, which can help shift interest towards more supportive greywater policy changes. The dissertation highlights that greywater policy is a key factor affecting the sustainability of urban water systems and that greywater treatment technologies and policies can contribute to sustainable urban water systems by addressing the social, ecological, and technological aspects of urban water challenges, supporting the vision of resilient, inclusive, livable, and sustainable water-smart cities.
Date Created
2024
Agent

Inclusive Urban Flood Resilience in a Developing Economy: Case of Georgetown, Guyana

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Description
Inequities and exclusions, compounded by the increasing intensity of extreme weather events, pose significant challenges to urban planning for low-elevation coastal zones (LECZ). Inclusive development (ID) and urban flood resilience (UFR) have emerged as widely endorsed solutions by scholars. Granting…

Inequities and exclusions, compounded by the increasing intensity of extreme weather events, pose significant challenges to urban planning for low-elevation coastal zones (LECZ). Inclusive development (ID) and urban flood resilience (UFR) have emerged as widely endorsed solutions by scholars. Granting that they gain substantial support and enthusiasm, they have the potential to transform vulnerable urban areas. While their noble intentions are commendable, the intricacies of ID cannot be overlooked, as UFR often inherits and perpetuates the inequalities ingrained in conventional development paradigms. Given the critical importance of ID and UFR in contemporary urban planning, my dissertation research devolved into their fusion by answering my main research question, what constitutes inclusive urban flood resilience? This investigation was carried out through a series of four secondary research questions distributed over three academic papers, each contributing a unique perspective and insights to this burgeoning field. Through a systematic literature review and employing bibliometric and thematic analyses, Chapter 2 offers a comprehensive understanding of inclusive development and a refined definition of the concept. Subsequently, taking Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, as a case study, Chapter 3 estimates its UFR and employs dimensionality reduction by way of principal component analysis to present these findings in a transparent manner. Chapter 4 builds on the findings of the previous chapters, by first presenting a novel approach to evaluate inclusive development within the framework of the results of Chapter 2, and secondly, together with a systematic meta-analysis of flood resilience measurements, it offers an examination of the ID-UFR nexus. The findings suggest that the concept of inclusive development is nuanced by context-specific definitions, that flood resilience in Georgetown varies among its sub-districts, and that city dimensions (natural, built, social, economic, and institutional), as assessed by pooling global studies, do not share synergistic relationships, being a measure of inclusive development. These findings are critical to urban planning in Georgetown and similar contexts globally as they provide data-driven guidance for understanding these concepts and applying them toward developing inclusive and flood-resilient cities and communities.
Date Created
2023
Agent

Community Engagement: A Curricular Approach to Improve Social Justice and Sustainability in the fields of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning

Description

There are unfortunately very few curricular guides that focus on community engagement within the higher education of landscape architecture. A Beginner’s Guide to Community Engagement in the Curriculum of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning to Improve Social Justice and Sustainability…

There are unfortunately very few curricular guides that focus on community engagement within the higher education of landscape architecture. A Beginner’s Guide to Community Engagement in the Curriculum of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning to Improve Social Justice and Sustainability helps resolve this issue and serves as a resource to students, educators, designers, and more. The guide centralizes a diverse collection of resources, guides students through learning materials, shares insight, and proposes potential community engagement methods. The booklet aims to help readers understand the importance of community engagement in design and shares different curricular approaches to introduce the work to students.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Access to Green Infrastructure and How it Influences Student Athletes’ Perceptions of the Environment

Description

As sustainability grows in popularity, it is important to understand what may influence people’s perceptions of the environment so that knowledge of how to motivate people to engage in sustainable practices is obtained. This project investigates people's perceptions on green…

As sustainability grows in popularity, it is important to understand what may influence people’s perceptions of the environment so that knowledge of how to motivate people to engage in sustainable practices is obtained. This project investigates people's perceptions on green infrastructure in relation to people’s motivation in order to engage in pro-environmental behavior. This study employs an online survey sent to student athletes at Arizona State University followed up by an semi-constructed interview to understand what kind of access these athletes had to green infrastructure while growing up, how much they value the environment today, and whether or not they attribute their current perceptions of the environment to their childhood access to green infrastructure. Findings suggest that there may be a relationship between student athletes’ access to green infrastructure and a higher value of the environment but only in those who are knowledgeable about how green infrastructure can impact the human population. By showing a possible correlation between access to green infrastructure and motivation to conserve the environment, this study shows the importance of environmental design and how the built environment influences people’s perceptions and behavior toward environmental sustainability.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Mitigating Urban Heat: How the Use of Greywater Can Mitigate the Urban Heat Island Effect

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Description

Urban heat island effect is caused by the built environment and impervious surfaces in urban areas causing the local air temperature to be significantly higher than that of near-by rural areas. This effect continues to worsen and spread nationwide as…

Urban heat island effect is caused by the built environment and impervious surfaces in urban areas causing the local air temperature to be significantly higher than that of near-by rural areas. This effect continues to worsen and spread nationwide as urban sprawl increases through land development. As more land gets paved over, more heat energy is produced and radiated into the local atmosphere. In Phoenix, urban heat island effect is expected to be the most prominent when the city has been the fastest growing metro area in the United States in this decade and continues to grow at a rapid pace. As urban heat island effects increase, climate change caused by anthropogenic activities continues to worsen. This causes drought conditions to worsen all across the American Southwest. California was the first state to enact water restrictions in response to the current drought conditions in 2015, with Nevada and Colorado following in 2021 in efforts to preserve water. Sustainable urban water systems management and design have been an emerging research area. One of the most effective systems being the reuse of greywater in irrigation. With this use of greywater for all outdoor water needs, excluding swimming pools, there is the ability to use equal amounts of outdoor water as indoor water. This increases the amount of available water for all landscaping. With increased amounts of available water, plants and vegetation will most often grow fast and larger. Larger and healthier vegetation both increase shade as well as evaporative-transpiration. Both of these can decrease the local air temperature. This research aims to investigate if and how the reuse of greywater for landscape irrigation can ultimately lead to cooler air temperatures, decreasing the urban heat island effect. In Spring 2022, I partnered with a local landscape architecture firm to examine a case study of a pilot greywater reuse system. The pilot was the basis for a larger greywater reuse system integrated into a multifamily apartment complex, currently under construction, in downtown Phoenix.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Investigating the Impact of Psychological Factors on Thermal Perception and Walking Experience

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Description
This dissertation focuses on thermal comfort and walking as an experiential phenomenon in outdoor urban environments. The goal of the study is to provide a better understanding of the impact of psychological adaptation factors on thermal comfort. The main research…

This dissertation focuses on thermal comfort and walking as an experiential phenomenon in outdoor urban environments. The goal of the study is to provide a better understanding of the impact of psychological adaptation factors on thermal comfort. The main research questions included the impact of psychological factors on outdoor thermal comfort as well as the impact of long-term thermal perception on momentary thermal sensation. My research follows a concurrent triangulation strategy as a mixed-method approach, which consisted of a simultaneous collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. Research consisted of five rounds of data collection in different locations beginning February 2018 and continuing through December 2019. During the qualitative phase, I gathered data in the form of an open-ended questionnaire but importantly, self-walking interviews where participants narrated their experience of the environment while recording one-minute long videos. The visual and audible information was first processed using thematic analysis and then further analyzed via Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). During the quantitative phase, I gathered information from participants in the form of three-step survey questionnaires, that data was analyzed using T-Test regression analysis in STATA. The quantitative data helped explore and address the initial research questions, while the qualitative data helped in addressing and explaining the trends and the experiential aspects of thermal environment.

Results revealed that spatial familiarity (as a psychological adaptation factor) has a significant relationship for both overall comfort and thermal comfort within outdoor environments. Moreover, long term thermal memory influences momentary thermal sensation. The results of qualitative and quantitative data were combined, compared, and contrasted to generate new insights in the design of outdoor urban environments. The depth and breadth of the qualitative data set consisting of more than a thousand minute-long of narrated video segments along with hundreds of pages of transcribed text, demonstrated the subjective aspects of thermal comfort. This research highlights the importance of context-based and human-centric design in any evidence-based design approach for outdoor environments. The implications of the study can provide new insights not only for architects and urban designers, but also for city planners, stakeholders, public officials, and policymakers.
Date Created
2020
Agent

Sustainability Disclosures as a Financial Asset and Tool for Brand Management

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Description
Sustainability disclosures have existed and been in use for over 20 years. Over the last century, corporate social responsibility ideals changed drastically from both the perspectives of consumers, investors, and corporations. Shifting from a start as an innovative initiative to…

Sustainability disclosures have existed and been in use for over 20 years. Over the last century, corporate social responsibility ideals changed drastically from both the perspectives of consumers, investors, and corporations. Shifting from a start as an innovative initiative to now a crucial instrument in maintaining a public image and keeping up with competitors, sustainability can now be used to an economic benefit. The benefits of sustainability disclosure exist now as major factors of key performance indicators and major impactors of the bottom line.
Date Created
2020-05
Agent

Direct-marketing strategy conceptualization for small farmers in Iowa: decision-making activities and their parallels to the design process

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Description
This study explores the processes of designing strategies. The context of this research is scoped to the direct-marketing activities of small farm operators in eastern Iowa. The research intent is to explore and articulate trends in decision-making processes that assist…

This study explores the processes of designing strategies. The context of this research is scoped to the direct-marketing activities of small farm operators in eastern Iowa. The research intent is to explore and articulate trends in decision-making processes that assist small farm operators in eastern Iowa with direct marketing farm-to-table products, to explore and articulate how the design process creates differentiated value, and to explore and articulate the relationship between the design process and the way that small farm operators in eastern Iowa conceptualize their direct-marketing strategies.

The research design takes a post-positivist approach and uses a grounded theory methodology. The study does not have a starting hypothesis but instead starts with the research intent described previously. Convergent mixed methods and a flexible plan are used for data collection including semi-structured interviews and surveys with key concepts operationalized into Likert scales. The participants are selected from eastern Iowa farmers’ markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) directories. For the qualitative data analysis, a grounded theory method is used to code interview response data, categorize the codes into related groups, and let the themes and sub-themes emerge from the data. For the quantitative data analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics are calculated on the aggregate data set.

The study finds that small farm operators are making strategic decisions about marketing mix variables such as product quality and relationship building, there are statistically significant correlations between design concepts and direct-marketing strategies, and that farmers designed their strategies by using the design process.
Date Created
2019
Agent

Heat mitigation in hot urban deserts: measuring actualities, magnitude and effectiveness

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Description
Urban-induced heating is a challenge to the livability and health of city dwellers. It is a complex issue that many cities are facing, and a more urgent hazard in hot urban deserts (HUDs) than elsewhere due to already high temperatures…

Urban-induced heating is a challenge to the livability and health of city dwellers. It is a complex issue that many cities are facing, and a more urgent hazard in hot urban deserts (HUDs) than elsewhere due to already high temperatures and aridity. The challenge compounds in the absence of more localized heat mitigation understanding. In addition, over-reliance on evidence from temperate regions is disconnected from the actualities of extreme bioclimatic dynamics found in HUDs. This dissertation is an integration of a series of studies that inform urban climate relationships specific to HUDs. This three-paper dissertation demonstrates heat mitigation aspirational goals from actualities, depicts local urban thermal drivers in Kuwait, and then tests morphological sensitivity of selected thermal modulation strategies in one neighborhood in Kuwait City.

The first paper is based on a systematic literature review where evidence from morphological mitigation strategies in HUDs were critically reviewed, synthesized and integrated. Metrics, measurements, and methods were extracted to examine the applicability of the different strategies, and a content synthesis identified the levels of strategy success. Collective challenges and uncertainties were interpreted to compare aspirational goals from actualities of morphological mitigation strategies.

The second paper unpacks the relationship of urban morphological attributes in influencing thermal conditions to assess latent magnitudes of heat amelioration strategies. Mindful of the challenges presented in the first study, a 92-day summer field-measurement campaign captured system dynamics of urban thermal stimuli within sub-diurnal phenomena. A composite data set of sub-hourly air temperature measurements with sub-meter morphological attributes was built, statistically analyzed, and modeled. Morphological mediation effects were found to vary hourly with different patterns under varying weather conditions in non-linear associations. Results suggest mitigation interventions be investigated and later tested on a site- use and time-use basis.

The third paper concludes with a simulation-based study to conform on the collective findings of the earlier studies. The microclimate model ENVI-met 4.4, combined with field measurements, was used to simulate the effect of rooftop shade-sails in cooling the near ground thermal environment. Results showed significant cooling effects and thus presented a novel shading approach that challenges orthodox mitigation strategies in HUDs.
Date Created
2019
Agent

Designing and implementing ecological monitoring of aridland urban ecological infrastructure (UEI): a case-study of design process and outcomes

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Description
Cities are increasingly using nature-based approaches to address urban sustainability challenges. These solutions leverage the ecological processes associated with existing or newly constructed Urban Ecological Infrastructure (UEI) to address issues through ecosystem services (e.g. stormwater retention or treatment). The growing…

Cities are increasingly using nature-based approaches to address urban sustainability challenges. These solutions leverage the ecological processes associated with existing or newly constructed Urban Ecological Infrastructure (UEI) to address issues through ecosystem services (e.g. stormwater retention or treatment). The growing use of UEI to address urban sustainability challenges can bring together teams of urban researchers and practitioners to co-produce UEI design, monitoring and maintenance. However, this co-production process received little attention in the literature, and has not been studied in the Phoenix Metro Area.

I examined several components of a co-produced design process and related project outcomes associated with a small-scale UEI project – bioswales installed at the Arizona State University (ASU) Orange Mall and Student Pavilion in Tempe, AZ. Specifically, I explored the social design process and ecohydrological and biogeochemical outcomes associated with development of an ecohydrological monitoring protocol for assessing post-construction landscape performance of this site. The monitoring protocol design process was documented using participant observation of collaborative project meetings, and semi-structured interviews with key researchers and practitioners. Throughout this process, I worked together with researchers and practitioners to co-produced a suite of ecohydrological metrics to monitor the performance of the bioswales (UEI) constructed at Orange Mall, with an emphasis on understanding stormwater dynamics. I then installed and operated monitoring equipment from Summer 2018 to Spring 2019 to generate data that can be used to assess system performance with respect to the co-identified performance metrics.

The co-production experience resulted in observable change in attitudes both at the individual and institutional level with regards to the integration and use of urban ecological research to assess and improve UEI design. My ecological monitoring demonstrated that system performance met design goals with regards to stormwater capture, and water quality data suggest the system’s current design has some capacity for stormwater treatment. These data and results are being used by practitioners at ASU and their related design partners to inform future design and management of UEI across the ASU campus. More broadly, this research will provide insights into improving the monitoring, evaluation, and performance efficacy associated with collaborative stormwater UEI projects, independent of scale, in arid cities.
Date Created
2019
Agent
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