Using linked process models to improve urban groundwater management: an example from Doncaster England

Linked water process models that simulate the complexities of urban water systems for towns overlying productive aquifers can help improve and better integrate urban water resource management. The Assessing and Improving the Sustainability of Urban Water Resources and Systems (AISUWRS) project has successfully linked together water scheduling, pipe leakage and groundwater flow models and applied these models to case studies in Europe and Australia. This paper describes the application and results of the modelling tools for a case study suburb in Doncaster England. The linking of process models offers the prospect of better quantification of flows and contaminant loads, and diverse scenarios were readily simulated once the base case had been set-up. The linked models produced higher estimates of recharge than previous estimates, and this may suggest that suburban catchments are an underutilised resource. At a time when increasing urbanisation and rising water use is predicted for groundwater-dependent southern England, there is a need for such tools to make the most of increasingly urbanised aquifers.