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The Urban Energy-Water Nexus: Utility-Level Water Flows and Embedded Energy

Publicly accessible License 

There are limited open source data available for determining water production/treatment and required energy for cities across the United States. This database represents the culmination of a two-year effort to obtain data from cities across the United States via open records requests in order to determine the state of the U.S. urban energy-water nexus. Data were requested at the daily or monthly scale when available for 127 cities across the United States, represented by 253 distinct water and sewer districts. Data were requested from cities larger than 100,000 people and from each state. In the case of states that did not have cities that met these criteria, the largest cities in those states were selected. The resulting database represents a drinking water service population of 81.4 million and a wastewater service population of 86.2 million people. Average daily demands for the United States were calculated to be 560 liters per capita for drinking water and 500 liters per capita of wastewater. The embedded energy within each of these resources is 340 kWh/1000 m3 and 430 kWh/1000 m3, respectively. Drinking water data at the annual scale are available for production volume (89 cities) and for embedded energy (73 cities). Annual wastewater data are available for treated volume (104 cities) and embedded energy (90 cities). Monthly data are available for drinking water volume and embedded energy (73 and 56 cities) and wastewater volume and embedded energy (88 and 70 cities). Please see the two related papers for this metadata are included with this submission.

Each folder name is a city that contributed data to the collection effort (City+State Abbreviation). Within each
folder is a .csv file with drinking water and wastewater volume and energy data. A READ-ME file within each folder
details the contents of the folder within any relevant information pertaining to data collection. Data are on the
order of a monthly timescale when available, and yearly if not.

Please cite the following papers when using the database:
Chini, C.M. and Stillwell, A.S. (2017). The State of U.S. Urban Water: Data and the Energy-Water Nexus. Water Resources Research. 54(3). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/2017WR022265
Chini, C.M., and Stillwell, A. (2016). Where are all the data? The case for a comprehensive water and wastewater utility database. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. 143(3). DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000739

Citation Formats

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (2018). The Urban Energy-Water Nexus: Utility-Level Water Flows and Embedded Energy [data set]. Retrieved from https://dx.doi.org/10.7481/1787483.
Export Citation to RIS
Chini, Christopher, Stillwell, Ashlynn S. The Urban Energy-Water Nexus: Utility-Level Water Flows and Embedded Energy. United States: N.p., 20 Feb, 2018. Web. doi: 10.7481/1787483.
Chini, Christopher, Stillwell, Ashlynn S. The Urban Energy-Water Nexus: Utility-Level Water Flows and Embedded Energy. United States. https://dx.doi.org/10.7481/1787483
Chini, Christopher, Stillwell, Ashlynn S. 2018. "The Urban Energy-Water Nexus: Utility-Level Water Flows and Embedded Energy". United States. https://dx.doi.org/10.7481/1787483. https://waterdams.nawihub.org/submissions/3.
@div{oedi_4036, title = {The Urban Energy-Water Nexus: Utility-Level Water Flows and Embedded Energy}, author = {Chini, Christopher, Stillwell, Ashlynn S.}, abstractNote = {There are limited open source data available for determining water production/treatment and required energy for cities across the United States. This database represents the culmination of a two-year effort to obtain data from cities across the United States via open records requests in order to determine the state of the U.S. urban energy-water nexus. Data were requested at the daily or monthly scale when available for 127 cities across the United States, represented by 253 distinct water and sewer districts. Data were requested from cities larger than 100,000 people and from each state. In the case of states that did not have cities that met these criteria, the largest cities in those states were selected. The resulting database represents a drinking water service population of 81.4 million and a wastewater service population of 86.2 million people. Average daily demands for the United States were calculated to be 560 liters per capita for drinking water and 500 liters per capita of wastewater. The embedded energy within each of these resources is 340 kWh/1000 m3 and 430 kWh/1000 m3, respectively. Drinking water data at the annual scale are available for production volume (89 cities) and for embedded energy (73 cities). Annual wastewater data are available for treated volume (104 cities) and embedded energy (90 cities). Monthly data are available for drinking water volume and embedded energy (73 and 56 cities) and wastewater volume and embedded energy (88 and 70 cities). Please see the two related papers for this metadata are included with this submission.

Each folder name is a city that contributed data to the collection effort (City+State Abbreviation). Within each
folder is a .csv file with drinking water and wastewater volume and energy data. A READ-ME file within each folder
details the contents of the folder within any relevant information pertaining to data collection. Data are on the
order of a monthly timescale when available, and yearly if not.

Please cite the following papers when using the database:
Chini, C.M. and Stillwell, A.S. (2017). The State of U.S. Urban Water: Data and the Energy-Water Nexus. Water Resources Research. 54(3). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/2017WR022265
Chini, C.M., and Stillwell, A. (2016). Where are all the data? The case for a comprehensive water and wastewater utility database. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. 143(3). DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000739}, doi = {10.7481/1787483}, url = {https://waterdams.nawihub.org/submissions/3}, journal = {}, number = , volume = , place = {United States}, year = {2018}, month = {02}}
https://dx.doi.org/10.7481/1787483

Details

Data from Feb 20, 2018

Last updated May 16, 2024

Submitted Aug 17, 2020

Organization

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Contact

Christopher Chini

217.244.6507

Authors

Christopher Chini

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ashlynn S. Stillwell

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

DOE Project Details

Project Name NAWI Integrated Data and Analysis

Project Lead Melissa Klembara

Project Number 36496

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