- Wastewater infrastructure costs and urban sprawl: the case of Douro region    348 kb by    Danko, Cristina & Mendes, Selene & Bentes, Isabel &, Ramos, Luis & Lourenco, Julia | ccdanko@civil.uminho.pt    Short Outline Sustainable water and wastewater infrastructure systems are more difficult to implement in Douro, characterized by complex morphology and susceptibility to extreme weather events. Abstract Sustainable water and wastewater infrastructure systems are more difficult to implement in regions that are characterized by complex morphology and susceptibility to extreme weather events. These natural features hinder the development of mobility networks and the accessibility to services, resulting in land occupation patterns composed of many small and scattered urban clusters. Therefore, comprehensive infrastructure systems are faced with obvious technical challenges in terms of design, construction, operation and maintenance. Such is the case in Northeastern Portugal, more specifically in the Douro Region, despite significant improvements to water and wastewater infrastructure through substantial World Bank funding in the 1980s. These effective improvements have allowed different land occupation dynamics such as urban sprawl, a phenomenon that has increased in the past 10 years despite declining population trends. The relationship between infrastructure cost and urban sprawl is explored in this paper. Rigorous procedures for estimating infrastructure cost are fundamental for planning, programming and selecting investment options and supporting medium and long-term decisions regarding location and extension of service networks. Research activities devoted to developing tools for parametric cost estimation for wastewater infrastructure are presented. For each area and system under study, data were collected regarding specific social and demographic parameters, technical characteristics of each infrastructure component and cost. Independent variables and cost drivers were selected for identifying and analysing the correlation between system cost and urban sprawl, providing a starting point for a discussion on how costs correlate to dispersion processes within the service area. This improved and detailed knowledge on infrastructure layout and costs will further enhance the quality of future planning decisions in critical areas, aiming for more balanced development and investment strategies. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2009: Low Carbon Cities   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper