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Cities are experiencing the impacts of climate change through water-related disasters, while the sustainable management of water resources remains crucial for urban climate resilience. Accordingly, frameworks that integrate urban water management with climate change adaptation become increasingly relevant. The Water Sensitive Cities (WSC) framework is built on three pillars that address cities’ role as communities and networks, water catchments, and providers of ecosystem services. A major element of the framework is the WSC index, which can be applied to assess cities by using multiple indicators under each pillar. With the objectives of adjusting and testing the WSC index in the context of the North Sea Region through a transdisciplinary knowledge co-production process, this paper presents the results from a self-assessment conducted by seven midsize cities. Insights gained from the comparison of self-assessment results are twofold. Firstly, the cities need to value the benefits of ecosystem services for climate change adaptation, and integrate climate change into other sectors. Secondly, the cities differ regarding the priority of climate change, and even the cities that aspire to be frontrunners have weaknesses. The application of the self-assessment process also creates an exchange and mutual learning platform for cities, and increases their awareness on climate resilience.

Nitrous oxide emissions can contribute significantly to the carbon footprint of municipal wastewater treatment plants even though emissions from conventional nitrogen removal processes are assumed to be moderate. An increased risk for high emissions can occur in connection with process disturbances and nitrite (NO2) accumulation. This work describes the findings at a large municipal wastewater
treatment plant where the levels of NO2 in the activated sludge process effluent were spontaneously and strongly increased on several activated sludge lines which was suspected to be due to shortcut nitrogen removal that stabilized for several months.

Environmental water management has become a global imperative in response to environmental degradation and the growing recognition that human well-being and livelihoods are critically dependent on freshwater ecosystems and the ecological functions and services they provide. Although a wide range of techniques and strategies for planning and implementing environmental flows has developed, many remain based on assumptions of hydrologic stationarity, typically focusing on restoring freshwater ecosystems to pre-development or “natural” conditions. Climate change raises major challenges to this conventional approach, in part because of increasing uncertainties
in patterns of water supply and demand.

Regulations to ensure adequate wastewater treatment are becoming more stringent as the negative effects of different pollutants on human health and the environment are understood. However, treatment of wastewater to remove pollutants is energy intensive, so has added significantly to the operation costs of wastewater treatment plants.

One of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission resources is industrial wastewater treatment plants. In this study, on-site and off-site greenhouse gas emissions of an extended aeration activated sludge process in a meat processing wastewater treatment plant were estimated using a new developed approach based on the IPCC method. On-site emissions were regarded as the emissions related to the biochemical treatment process and microbial activity in the wastewater. On-site emissions were estimated from organic materials removal from wastewater and microbial mass activity. Biological oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal were considered as pollutant resources of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), respectively. Off-site emission was estimated from electricity consumption, chemical use and the sludge stabilization process. This paper aimed to determine and reduce on-site and off-site emissions for the extended aeration process in an industrial wastewater treatment plant. Modification of operating conditions was applied to reduce GHG emissions.
The results revealed that electricity consumption was the major source of the greenhouse gas emissions for this process with a value of 6,002.77 kg CO2e/d. The minimization of total GHG emissions reached up to 17.1% by modifying the treatment process conditions.

The aim of this study is to compare methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) fluxes from horizontal subsurface flow (HSSF) and vertical subsurface flow (VF) systems treating municipal wastewater in tropical climates

This study presents a baseline assessment of carbon emissions in water utilities in Madaba, Jordan. The Energy Performance and Carbon Emissions Assessment and Monitoring Tool (ECAM) is applied in the present study in order to reduce indirect and direct emissions. Input data for the assessment included inter alia, population, water volumes, energy consumption, and type of wastewater treatment.