Water is the indispensable natural resource for all organisms on the earth. According to Asiwal et al. (2016), the availability of clean drinking water directly determines the life quality of people. Nevertheless, along with the progress of industrialization and water pollution, water scarcity at global scope is increasingly serious. Today, large amount of domestic and industrial wastewater are discharged to the ocean and rivers, resulting in more serious water pollution. According to statistics, over 80% of wastewater generated from human activities is directly pumped into sea or rivers without removing the pollutants from the wastewater (United Nations, 2019). In order to address the problem of wastewater, the construction of wastewater infrastructure has been considered as a key solution to wastewater (Morris, 2017). The Sustainable Development Goal 9 mainly focuses on addressing three key aspects of sustainable development, which are the establishment of infrastructure, sustainable industrialization, and innovation respectively (Mugagga & Nabaasa, 2016). The building of infrastructure offers the foundational physical facilities that are essential to society and business. Wastewater infrastructure is essential facilities used to treat wastewater.
Nevertheless, there are various issues currently facing wastewater infrastructure. Aging infrastructure is an important issue currently facing wastewater infrastructure. According to Selvakumar et al. (2015), aging infrastructure is a common issue that has been widely found among wastewater systems worldwide. Generally, the majority of wastewater infrastructure was established for many years, and even past the useful life. For example, the United States has around 16,000 wastewater systems (Selvakumar et al.,2015).However, most components of the wastewater infrastructure in the United States are more than 100 years old (Selvakumar et al., 2015). To some extent, the aging wastewater infrastructure not only limits the efficacy of wastewater treatment, but also poses potential health and safety risks to the public. In addition, the aging wastewater infrastructure cannot well meet the growing demands for wastewater treatment in the future (Selvakumar et al., 2015). The Sustainable Development Goal 9 places the emphasis on building resilient infrastructure, facilitating sustainable industrialization and fostering innovations for realizing sustainable development. Under this condition, public utilities are required to make significant investment in rehabilitating and replacing the aging wastewater infrastructure and to faster innovation for managing wastewater infrastructure systems in order to achieve sustainable supply of clean drinking waters so as to meeting the growing demand for water across the world.
In order to address the aging problem currently facing wastewater infrastructure,smart solutions needs to be taken. One of solutions to address the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure is to rehabilitate and replace the aging wastewater infrastructure (American Water, 2013). Rehabilitation is used to fix the broken components of wastewater infrastructure for ensuring the normal operations of the wastewater infrastructure (American Water, 2013). When adopting rehabilitation as the solutions to the aging wastewater infrastructure,acoustic monitoring technologies are adopted to detect where wastewater infrastructure needs to be fixed or improved (American Water, 2013). The replacement solution is used when the aging wastewater infrastructure cannot be rehabilitated. This solution requires local governments and utilities to make the investment in building new and infrastructure. The Sustainable Development Goal 9 suggested that sustainable development can be achieved by building resilient infrastructure (United Nations, 2019). By replacing or rebuilding the aging wastewater infrastructure, it would help to ensure efficacy of wastewater treatment. However, such solution is most costly and complex because it needs to install new wastewater infrastructure for turn the wastewater into clean water. Another smart solution to address the aging wastewater infrastructure is to adopt innovative technologies to manage the wastewater infrastructure (Selvakumar et al., 2015). The Sustainable Development Goal 9 claims that sustainable development can be realized by fostering innovation (United Nations, 2019). Under this condition, it needs to strengthen innovation in various aspects for addressing the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure. In order to tackle the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure, governments and utilities needs to increase the expenditures on research and development in order to develop renewal technologies to detect and evaluate the performance and wastewater infrastructure annually and to strengthen the useful life of wastewater infrastructure. For example, utilities could uses advanced nondestructive electromagnetic technology to evaluate the baseline structural condition of wastewater infrastructure and then take suitable actions to prevent the aging problem of wastewater infrastructure based on the detection results (Terrero et al., 2013). Besides that, in order to tackle the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure, it would also promote innovation in terms of anti-aging materials in order to increase the anti-aging performance of wastewater infrastructure. By using new and innovative material in wastewater infrastructure, it is believed that the problem of aging wastewater infrastructure can be well presented and addressed. Finally, continuous innovation in term of waste recycling technology installed in wastewater infrastructure is also needed in order to meet the increasing demand for wastewater treatment.
References
American Water (2013). Challenges in the water industry: Infrastructure and its role in water supply,[Online] Available from: https://pr.amwater.com/static-files/7be9385b-1a4a-4a21-b161-6ea22c50332b[Accessed: 19 August 2019].
Asiwal, R. S., Sar, S. K., Singh, S., & Sahu, M. (2016). Wastewater Treatment by Effluent Treatment Plants, SSRG International Journal of Civil Engineering,3(12), pp. 29-35.
Morris, J. C. (2017). Planning for Water Infrastructure: Challenges and Opportunities, Public Works Management & Policy,22(1), pp. 24-30.
Mugagga, F., & Nabaasa, B. B. (2016). The centrality of water resources to the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): A review of potentials and constraints on the African continent, International Soil and Water Conservation Research,4(3), pp. 215-223.
Selvakumar, A., Matthews, J. C., Condit, W., & Sterling, R. (2015). Innovative research program on the renewal of aging water infrastructure systems, Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology,64(2), pp. 117-129.
Terrero, P., Arrebola, V. E., Aguiar, L., lovett, R. J., & Coates, R. A. (2013). Comprehensive renewal program addresses aging water and sewer infrastructure, Journal AWWA,105(6), pp. 72-77
United Nations (2019). Sustainable Development Goal 6. [Online] Available from: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg6 [Accessed: 19 August 2019].
United Nations (2019). Sustainable Development Goal 9.[Online] Available from: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg9[Accessed: 19 August 2019].
urban wastewater treatment 