Lecturer: Andrea Capodaglio  

Course name: Water-energy sustainable urban development
Course code: 505071
Degree course: Ingegneria per l'Ambiente e il Territorio
Disciplinary field of science: ICAR/03
University credits: ECTS 3
Course website: n.d.

Specific course objectives

The course is designed for students in the last year of the master degree programmes in Civil (Environmental) Engineering and Civil Engineering and Architecture. Students will learn concepts and applications of new paradigms that represent a major shift in the way cities will be built or retrofitted to achieve sustainable development. A sustainable city will power itself with renewable sources of energy, conserve and reuse water, create the smallest possible ecological footprint, recover resources from used water and organic solids, and produce the lowest quantity of pollution possible. By restoring and developing a hydrologically and ecologically functioning landscape, communities will become resilient to increased flooding; urban (green) infrastructure, resilient and functional landscape, and water resources will constitute one system. The course is based on theoretical concepts learned in courses of Hydraulics, Sewer Systems Design, Sanitary Engineering, Wastewater Treatment and Water Supply Engineering, that are applied in an innovative, forward-looking fashion, breaking conventional rules. Examples of state-of-the-art technology for water and wastewater treatment and energy recovery will be illustrated.

Course programme

Historic Paradigms of Water Management and Sewerage · Urban Metabolism and indicator Footprints · Drivers of Change · The Fifth Paradigm of the Cities of the Future · Definition of urban sustainability for water and energy · Sustainability criteria · Triple bottom line · Water courses restoration and daylighting, landscape · Distributed systems and integrated resource recovery · Implementing urban resilience concepts at the local, cluster and regional levels · Achieving sustainability through resilience in the Cities of the Future · Resilience definition and criteria (LEED, OPL, American Association of Landscape Architects) · Example projects · Green (Low Impact Development-LID) stormwater infrastructure · How to implement resilience · Water /Stormwater/Used Water Management · Water footprint and water uses · Water conservation · Substitute sources of water · Recycle · Distributed water management systems · Centralized resource recovery · Restoration and daylighting of urban water bodies · The anaerobic bioprocesses as core technology · Anaerobic systems · Waste to energy · Biofuel and gas from algae nourished by nutrients from used water · Co-digestion and pyrolysis · Biochemical methane potential and market studies · Water/Energy Nexus – Achieving Net Zero Carbon Footprint · GHGs and energy footprint · Renewable energy sources and savings in urban settings · Water and energy recovery in distributed systems · Methane, hydrogen and electricity recovery · Integrated resource recovery facility · Cities of the Future – where are they?

Course entry requirements

Students should possess concepts of urban water management, water and wastewater treatment and energy flows.

Course structure and teaching

Lectures (hours/year in lecture theatre): 20
Practical class (hours/year in lecture theatre): 6
Practicals / Workshops (hours/year in lecture theatre): 0

Suggested reading materials

V. Novotny et al. (2010) Water centric sustainable communities, J. Wiley&Sons, New York,

Testing and exams

The students will work on individual or team projects, depending on their interest and degree course for example, an individual research with class presentation or synthetic design projects on various topics, such as: Urban brownfield development into a water centric ecocity, or Water, energy, nutrients and other resources recovery from used water and solids. The exact examination and grading modalities will be discussed with the students at the beginning of the course.