Abstract Summary
Facing changing conditions like climate change, water-stressed regions are exploring alternative water supply options, including agricultural and urban reuse. While required technologies are available, highly flexible and demand-driven management strategies for water reuse in urban and agricultural irrigation are still in the first stages of development, especially in Germany. In a research project, water reuse using treated municipal wastewater was tested and a cost-benefit analysis was carried out to derive the most efficient management strategies. This cost-benefit analysis combines the concepts of life-cycle costing and ecosystem services (ESS), which was used to develop a use-case-specific indicator-based evaluation matrix with decision-relevant economic indicators and ecological endpoints. The general and transferable ESS assessment matrix to assess the benefits was then applied in a case-specific context in Germany to quantify technology-induced changes in local ecosystem services. The transition from the theoretical matrix to the practical implementation revealed significant challenges in quantifying and monetising the identified ESS, mainly due to the scarcity of relevant data. To overcome this challenge, several approaches were evaluated. With this work, we want to show the conference participants a cost-benefit analysis using a German case study, which is now being transferred from concept to practice.
