SwimCity
The impact of floods and storm events on short-term variations of water quality in urban recreational surface waters
Project funded by the OeAW, Anniversary Fund of the City of Vienna call CLIMATE CHANGE: living with the consequences in a metropolitan region like Vienna.
Principal Investigators
Sílvia Cervero-Aragó (Medical University of Vienna)
Julia Derx (TU Wien) (Co-PI)
Cooperation partners
Julia Walochnik (Medical University of Vienna)
Alfred Paul Blaschke (TU Wien)
Hatice Seda Kilic (TU Wien)
Gerhard Lindner (TU Wien)
Rita Linke (TU Wien)
Andreas Farnleitner (TU Wien, Karl Landsteiner University Krems)
Regina Sommer (Medical University of Vienna)
Status
Ongoing (01.01.2020 – 31.12.2020) 12 months
Project summary
In order to achieve the UN Sustainable Developmental Goals, it is essential to ensure an adequate quality and safe use of the urban water resources that is resilient to climate change, urbanisation and population growth. According to predictions for some parts of Austria, climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of storm events, and lead to increased flow rates of the rivers. In parallel, demographic studies estimated that by 2050, around 75% of the world’s population will be residing in urban areas. The dramatic increase in urbanization will also increase the amount of impervious areas reducing the amount of water absorbed by the soil.
The presence of human and animal enteric pathogens in water is caused by fecal contamination. In cities, these pathogens are introduced into surface and groundwater through the discharge of wastewater, combined sewer overflows or as rainfall induced runoff from human or animal feces. Thus, more storm water runoff leading to more combined sewer overflows reduces the quality of the urban water resources and poses a public health risk when using them for drinking water production, recreation and irrigation.
Currently, there is a lack of understanding how cities and water management should react to the challenges that large changes in precipitation events due to climate change will generate. In particular studies on the effect of storm events and floods on the short-term variations of the city’s water quality and the risks of infection are urgently needed.
The goal of our project is to study how floods and extreme precipitation impact the quality of two representative urban water bodies. To do that, a holistic approach will be applied by an interdisciplinary team of researchers based on an innovative combination of state-of-the-art monitoring and modelling techniques. Monitoring techniques consist of advanced genetic quantitative microbial source tracking methods, analyses of standard fecal indicators (SFI) and methods for enumerating and genotyping Cryptosporidium, a reference pathogens considered one of the most common protozoan enteropathogens worldwide.
The data obtained will be used for evaluating a transient hydrological and a hydraulic transport model during storm and flood events and for gaining insights into the microbial fate and transport from potential human and non-human fecal sources. Results will provide the information needed for assessing the risk of fecal transmittable infections and for devising sustainable management strategies to ensure the safe use of urban waters. This is a cooperation project of the Interuniversity Cooperation Centre Water & Health (www.waterandhealth.at).
The ICC Water & Health
is a Cooporation of:
