Analysis of Wastewater Production to Implement Circular Economy Solutions in a Smart Cities University Campus Living Lab

Abstract

The smart management of water resources needs to be addressed urgently, especially in “water-scarce” nations. Mexico not only is the eleventh most populated country in the world, but also has a higher urbanization rate than the global average. By 2010, seventy-eight percent of its inhabitants lived in cities; where the challenges of distributing resources to maintain a good quality of life still exist. Furthermore, approximately eighty million Mexicans experience a lack of water provisioning for at least a month and twenty million citizens continue with severe shortages during more than half a year. Narrowing it down, Guadalajara is the second biggest city in Mexico and it has launched macro projects that have not met expectations. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a scalable solution, transforming traditional practices into Smart Cities ones. This analysis considers a circular economy model using information technologies to simulate the wastewater flows at the Living Lab of a University of Guadalajara Campus and evaluate the efficiency rate of two scenarios with a virtual bioreactor in comparison with published data of an existing treatment plant in Mexico City.