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.