Sustainable urban water resources management considering life-cycle environmental impacts of water utilization under uncertainty

• An hybrid approach was proposed for supporting sustainable urban water resources management.
• This approach was based on life cycle assessment and fuzzy inexact two-stage programming.
• Multiple uncertainties and their interactions of LCA results and post-LCA management processes can be addressed.
• The urban water management systems in Dalian of China were adopted for illustrating applicability of the developed approach.
• A variety of water resources allocation schemes were generated with the consideration of minimized environmental impacts.

To improve applicability of life cycle assessment (LCA) in supporting direct and robust decision-making, an integrated approach was developed through incorporating operational research and uncertainty analysis methods within a general LCA framework. The methodology can (a) help comprehensive evaluation of environmental impacts at multiple product-service levels, (b) facilitate the reflections of multiple LCA associated uncertainties and transfer them into consequential decision-making process, and (c) identify desired water allocation schemes for minimizing life-cycle environmental impacts. This represented an improvement upon conventional LCA method, as well as water resources allocation. The developed method was then verified in a water-stressed city (i.e., the City of Dalian), northeastern China. The application indicated that the proposed method was effective in generating desired water supply schemes under uncertainties, reflecting the associated life-cycle environmental impacts, and strengthening capabilities of both LCA and operational research methods. The results also indicated that the top three contributors for life-cycle environmental impacts would be districts of Pulandian and Zhuanghe, and Municipal zone of the city.