Week 5: Primary infrastructures, Earth is warming Flashcards
The 6 primary urban infrastructures
- Transport
- Buildings and green spaces
- Energy
- Water and green infrastructure
- Waste
- Communications
Key attributes of urban transport
- Tracks: physical support of transport modes (e.g roadways, railways, bike lanes, footpaths, canals)
- Terminals: transfers between modes (e.g bus hubs, train stations, ports, airports)
Key attributes of urban buildings and green infrastructure
- Green: parks, corridors, urban forests, bioswales, vegetalisation (green roofs, home gardens, parking strips)
- Buildings: private (housing), public, commercial, industrial
Green infrastructure integrates
Natural and built elements to reduce the environmental impact of infrastructures and the built environment. (may provide other benefits, such as health promotion)
Green spaces are
Vegetated areas of land or water within or adjoining built-up areas
Key attributes of urban energy: electricity + fuels
- Complex public and private system involving generation + transmission + distribution to consumers storage
- Local back-up systems and off-grid generation
Electricity generation and supply process
- Generation
- Transmission
- Distribution
- Retailers
- Customers
Electricty generation to consumer
- Remote power generation
- Distributed systems close to point of use
Distributed infrastructure is
Diverse (scales and energy sources)
Electricty generation excess needed to fuel
Local network
Local network systems categories
- Industrial
- Commercial
- Residential
- Vehicle charging
- Storage
Percentage of electricity generation that is renewable
87%
Percentage of total energy that is renewable
30%
Energy: fuel types
- Petrol (oil)
- Fossil gas
- Coal
- Biomass
Key attributes of urban water services: three waters
- Water supply (in)
- Wastewater (out)
- Stormwater (through)
Urban water services process
- Collection (lakes, rivers, streams, rainfall)
- Storage (reservoirs, dams, tanks)
- Treatment (treatment plants)
- Distribution (aqueducts, channels, tunnels, pumps, sumps, pipes,)
Difference between reticulation and reticulation system
- Reticulation: a net-like pattern
- Reticulation system: a piped network
Built environment water cycle
- Sea
- Precipitation and evaporation
- Stormwater
- Reservoirs and groundwater
- Raw to potable water treatment
- Household and industrial use
- Wastewater collection
- Wastewater treatement
- Repeat
Green infrastructure
Natural and planned vegetative systems
Blue-green infrastructure
Planned, interconnected networks including water bodies
Waste management of wastewater involves
Screening and seperation
Waste management of solids involves
Land fill, biodigestion, incineration
Waste water treatment causes
Outfall to environment
Categories of green infrastructure
Natural, enhanced, engineered and grey infrastructure
Examples of natural green infrastructure
Wetlands, forests, parks, meadows, lawns and gardens, soil
Examples of enhanced green infrastructure
Rain gardens, green roofs and walls, bioswales, urban trees, naturalized stormwater ponds
Examples of engineered green infrastructure
Permeable pavement, rain barrels, cisterns, perforated pipes, infiltration trenches
Examples of grey infrastructure
Bridges, roads, parking lots, culverts, pipes
Challenges to waste management
- Aging and failing infrastructure
- Many combined systems
- Contamination
- 67 different systems across NZ
- Approx 100 billion dollars pent over 30-40 years
Waste water overflows
- Dry weather: due to blockages or mechanical failures
- Wet weather from wastewater or combined systems: controlled or uncontrolled
Solid waste management procedure
Collection, recovery, sorting, transport, disposal (not all waste is collected)
How much (trackable) material reached its end of life in NZ in 2020
12 million tonnes
Waste strategy goal
“Reducing waste will help with our transition from a linear economy with its take, make, dispose, approach to a low emissions circular economy”
A low emissions economy involves
- Keeping resources in use for as long as possible
- Extracting the maximum value from resources while in use
- Then recovering and regenerating them
Interconnected systems are co-located
- Dependence
- Interdependence
Dependences are
One infrastructure relies on the existence and attributes of another infrastructure (one-way)
Interdependences are
Infrastructure systems that rely on each other to achieve performance objectives (two-way)
6 categories of interdependencies
- Physical
- Cyber
- Spatial
- Logical
- Policy
- Societal
Physical interdependencies involve
Material flows, engineering reliance, operations
Cyber interdependencies involve
Information transfer, system control
Spatial interdependencies involve
Local environment affects multiple infrastructures
Logical interdependencies involve
Management, human decision making
Policy interdependencies involve
Response to event in one infrastructure affects another
Societal interdependencies involve
Event infrastructure affects public opinion, has cultural effects etc
Infrastructure vulnerability: critically
Interdependencies and importance of dependent services
Infrastructure vulnerability: exposure
Are key parts of the infrastructure in a hazard zone (flood, tsunami, earthquake)
Infrastructure vulnerability: risk
Are key parts of the infrastructure likely to be damaged as a result of its exposure
Infrastructure vulnerability: restoration
How much time is required, considering interdependencies with other infra-structures
Infrastructure vulnerability: mitigation
What actions can be taken to mitigate vulnerability and minimise recovery times
People have worked with ______ to shape ecosystems for millenia
Low-intensity fire
Fire adapted regimes
Savanna, temperate forests, chapparal
Positive feedback of high intensity fire driving regime change
Lower evapotranspiration
Negative feedback of high intensity fire driving regime change
Higher albedo
Landscape transformation due to changing climate
- Wildfire conditions
- Higher temperature, lower humidity, stronger wind, drought
- Climate model projections
- Future fire risk under different warming scenarios
Pines being replaced by lost plants instead of native fauna because
Cost
Earths surface recieves energy from
The sun, green house gases and clouds in the atmosphere
Incoming solar radiation is
Transmitted and reflected
Transmitted radiation is
Absorbed by earths surface, which is warmed and radiates heat (infrared radiation)
Back radiation
Infrared radiation and radiate it back toward the surface and away to space (re-emission)
Through back radiation, earths surface receives how much more energy from the atmosphere as directly coming from the sun
Nearly twice as much
The global patterns of insolation
Warming of the surface, which warms the atmosphere, which sets the atmosphere and the ocean in motion, creating weather and climate
Weather vs climate
Weather equals day-to-day conditions,
Climate equals average conditions on a larger scale
What moves heat through the climate system
Motion of the atmosphere and ocean
Resilience definition
The capacity of a system to recover or reconfigure when conditions change
Coping range
The magnitude or rate of disturbance a system can tolerate without significant adverse impacts or the crossing of critical thresholds
