Water management relates to wide areas of research and development (R&D) that can provide useful support for water/environmental engineers and hydrological professionals. Technical and scientific research driven by novel ideas can yield blueprints and techniques for practical engineering applications. However, the demands of real-life water problems also inspire motivation for advances of research. Sufficient communication through discussions in the water R&D community is an effective method of knowledge transfer and exchange. There has been a diverse coverage of topics in recent issues of this ICE Proceedings journal, both themed issues and selections of studies on specific water projects or problems in water management. This issue of Water Management brings together recent progress in the R&D support for water management. This includes water supply to be sustained under climate change; treatment/remediation of contaminated water for a better quality of environment; data acquisition device development; and advanced numerical modelling for better conceptual understanding of the fluid dynamics. Attention is also paid to correspondence between authors and readers through discussions around these areas.
Peters (2010) presents an interesting article on assessment of the impact of extreme climate (hurricane) on water supply in the Eastern Caribbean Union Countries (ECUC), taking Dominica as an example. It reviews the impact of a major hurricane, Ivan, on the water supply services in Grenada and identifies key lessons to be learnt for potential decision-making on water resources management in similar regions. It also identifies rainwater harvesting and storage as critical components and their mitigation strategies towards promoting its integrated water, further to the author's previous work. Impact was categorised as short term on quantity and quality of water resources, but as long term for water supply infrastructure and the spatial/temporal availability of water supply.
Equally important to water resources protection, restoration of contaminated water is also a major work in water management. Carliell-Marquet et al. (2010) compares the inorganic profiles of activated sludge and digested sludge from iron-dosed chemical phosphorus removal in the sewage treatment works with their undosed control and discusses the potential implications of the observed changes. Bioavailable iron and phosphorus were lower in iron-dosed activated sludge, with most of them bound as iron-hydroxy-phosphates. Similar results were found for anaerobically digested sludge; iron and phosphorus increased substantially but bioavailability decreased. By contrast calcium, magnesium, copper and zinc were increasingly bioavailable in the digester after iron-dosing.
Yang (2010) investigates conditionally averaged turbulent structures and mechanism of the wake law in the 2D uniform flow. Based upon derivation of the theoretical equations, more systematic scenarios of flow parameters and conditions were carried out. Yang shows detailed study on flow flux, velocity, sheer stress and turbulent intensity. This work reveals the relationship between the frequency and conditional features of up/down motions and pressure fluctuations (pipe flow) or water level (open-channel flow).
The work of Cheng et al. (2010) reflects technology innovation and related R&D for online turbidity monitoring in removal of suspended algae by coagulation using various techniques. The dose effect for coagulation and settleable flocs was investigated in the experiments. A new online nephelometric turbidimeter connected to a data acquisition unit was used for continuous measurement of turbidity during the process. The experiments can thereby provide much better and more detailed information than conventional jar tests.
