Development of an integrated framework for assessing the impact of urban planning on water quality

Recently, environmental concerns have gained increasing attention in the urban planning process. This paper aims to address the effects of urban planning on the surrounding water quality by developing an integrated modelling framework. This framework provides a conceptual and quantitative tool to quantify the impacts of urbanisation patterns on water systems, including urban drainage, wastewater treatment plant, and receiving rivers. The development of the framework (known as SSDIM), including individual components and their interactions, is described in this paper, and its functionality is demonstrated by a semi-hypothetical case study. The results show the effects of different planning strategies on receiving water quality, and also show that the framework is a flexible and useful tool for town planners and water specialists, to explore sustainable paths in the urban planning process.