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Abstract
Shanghai, the economic centre of China, is under increasing pressures of potable water shortage, urban flooding and surface water pollution by urbanization. As one of the best countermeasures, rainwater utilization plays a considerably important role in the alleviation of these issues. A four-step method of cost-effectiveness-based multi-criteria optimization (CEMCO), which integrates the advantages of monitoring data, monetary-based techniques and stakeholder preferences, was proposed for sustainable rainwater utilization. The first rainwater utilization system in the urban residential area of Shanghai was taken as a case study, and eight alternatives to the existing system were proposed. The results of the study showed that the net present value and the dynamic payback period of the optimized system during the 15-year life cycle were 407.4 thousand CNY (ChiNa Yuan) and 8.26 years, respectively. The results also indicated that rainwater utilization can improve the sustainability of cities when different stakeholder preferences and multiple criteria were considered.
Acknowledgements
This paper was supported by the Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research of the Ministry of Education of China (No. 11JZD024), the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41171017; 40871016; 41130525) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China. The authors acknowledge Liguo Wang from Vanke Co., Ltd., Zhiping Kuang from Tongji University and Lixin Zhang from Shanghai Housing Authority for their help in collecting data. Special thanks to Robyn M.B. Stuber and Xuchu Meng from University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the reviewers as well as the editors for their valuable suggestions.