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

    Metadata Updated: May 17, 2024

    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

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons Attribution

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date June 24, 2021
    Metadata Updated Date May 17, 2024

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from OpenEI data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date June 24, 2021
    Metadata Updated Date May 17, 2024
    Publisher University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    Maintainer
    Doi 10.7481/1787483
    Identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/4036
    Data First Published 2018-02-20T07:00:00Z
    Data Last Modified 2024-05-16T21:26:14Z
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 019:20
    Metadata Context https://openei.org/data.json
    Metadata Catalog ID https://openei.org/data.json
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Data Quality True
    Harvest Object Id bca87953-0905-4037-807d-19b53361274a
    Harvest Source Id 7cbf9085-0290-4e9f-bec1-91653baeddfd
    Harvest Source Title OpenEI data.json
    Homepage URL https://waterdams.nawihub.org/submissions/3
    License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
    Old Spatial {"type":"Polygon","coordinates":-172.56077500000004,14.158105459124451,-53.8316,14.158105459124451,-53.8316,71.66169671170795,-172.56077500000004,71.66169671170795,-172.56077500000004,14.158105459124451}
    Program Code 019:001
    Projectlead Melissa Klembara
    Projectnumber 36496
    Projecttitle NAWI Integrated Data and Analysis
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash d6fe40f1b46f459c13d5067b7e483578181e2d7ddc8ee56c6d279e9a5ff9fc3d
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial {"type":"Polygon","coordinates":-172.56077500000004,14.158105459124451,-53.8316,14.158105459124451,-53.8316,71.66169671170795,-172.56077500000004,71.66169671170795,-172.56077500000004,14.158105459124451}

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