Decentralized Green Water-Infrastructure Systems: Resilient and Sustainable Management Strategies for Building Water Systems

In this chapter, we draw attention to urban cities’ building water systems management strategies, focusing on both sustainability and resilience of water and energy resources. Rainwater harvesting and graywater recycling have long been identified as alternative water sources for the sustainable management of water resources. We present a conceptual framework for a Decentralized Green Water-Infrastructure System (DGWIS) for large buildings (industrial, commercial, government, and office) that integrates locally available water sources (rainwater and graywater) with renewable local energy sources (solar and wind) to support water treatment and distribution. The optimization framework for DGWIS introduced in this chapter will quantify the energy and water potentially saved. DGWIS can function as a standalone infrastructure element and could also be an attractive option for high density population urban areas where water scarcity is a serious issue, particularly for large buildings such as shopping centers, high-rise buildings, hotels and dormitories.