InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Water Sustainability in Cities > Unit 9. Planning and Decision-Making
 Earth-focused Modules and Courses for the Undergraduate Classroom
showLearn More
These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The materials are free and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »
How to Use »

New to InTeGrate?

Learn how to incorporate these teaching materials into your class.

  • Find out what's included with each module
  • Learn how it can be adapted to work in your classroom
  • See how your peers at hundreds of colleges and university across the country have used these materials to engage their students

How To Use InTeGrate Materials »
show Download
The instructor material for this module are available for offline viewing below. Downloadable versions of the student materials are available from this location on the student materials pages. Learn more about using the different versions of InTeGrate materials »

Download a PDF of all web pages for the instructor's materials

Download a zip file that includes all the web pages and downloadable files from the instructor's materials

Unit 9. Planning and Decision-Making

Gigi Richard, Colorado Mesa University (grichard@coloradomesa.edu)
Author Profile

Summary

Unit 9 is a group activity that requires students to apply the material they have learned in Units 1–8 in an urban water system design project. Students are presented with a scenario and are required to select options to design a feasible and sustainable urban water system that considers the triple bottom line in their design. The design project requires that students consider hydrologic processes (e.g., evapotranspiration, runoff) in designing outdoor landscaping and amount of pervious and impervious area. Students also consider indoor water use efficiency and other methods (e.g., rain barrels) to reduce water consumption. Students are also asked to consider the connection between urban development and atmospheric processes. Students apply systems thinking by connecting hydrologic and atmospheric processes with the human built system. Student groups present their design to the class and assess each other's designs. These activities can be used as a summative assessment for the entire module.

Share your modifications and improvements to this activity through the Community Contribution Tool »

Learning Goals

After completing Unit 9, students should be able to:
  • Plan a sustainable urban water system for a particular scenario
  • Articulate pros and cons of water system options
  • Describe their consideration of the triple bottom line in their design decisions
  • Communicate a plan via a poster presentation and short oral report illustrating their decision matrix
  • Assess the group plans and select and defend which plan is most feasible and sustainable

Context for Use

Unit 9 is intended to be the summative assessment for the entire module. It is designed to take place over two 75-minute class periods. During the first class period, students are presented with a scenario for which they need to select features to design a sustainable and feasible urban water system. During the second class period, the groups present their designs to the rest of the class. Individual assessment can be conducted by requiring students to assess the group plans and select and defend which plan is most feasible and sustainable.

Description and Teaching Materials

Overview

Unit 9 is intended to be the summative assessment for the Water Sustainability in Cities Module. It assesses the module learning goal of enabling students to plan for water sustainability in cities by giving students a design problem where they must implement the sustainable practices learned in the previous units to enhance the water sustainability of a proposed suburban development. In the final group presentation, students are assessed on their achievement of the unit learning goals including:

  • Planning a sustainable urban water system for a particular scenario
  • Articulating the pros and cons of their chosen water system options
  • Conducting a decision analysis considering the triple bottom line
  • Communicating their group's plan via a poster or oral presentation
  • Assessing the group plans and selecting and defending which plan is most feasible and sustainable

In this unit, students divide into small groups and are presented with a design problem. They are given a ten-acre parcel on which twenty-one homes will be built. Their goal is to implement sustainable practices to minimize the indoor and outdoor water consumption of the development, to minimize storm water runoff from the site, and to consider the impact of urban development on the hydrologic cycle. Each group presents its sustainable suburban development design to the class.

Two class sessions are necessary. During the first session, students work as a group to develop their design. Some additional time outside of class may be necessary for the group to prepare its class presentation. During the second class session, the groups present their designs to the rest of the class. The summative assessment is based on these group presentations.

An individual summative assessment is included, in which students critique the different designs in a short written essay and select which design they think is the most sustainable.

Teaching Notes:

  • Computers are not necessary for this unit, but may be helpful.
  • Poster paper or flip charts and markers are required for group presentations.
  • This unit requires two class periods. The instructor may wish to provide additional time between these class periods for students to complete the required assignment.
  • A downloadable copy of Unit 9 instructions for students (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 2.8MB Aug20 24) is available to distribute for this activity. This document outlines the steps for activities for both days of Unit 9.

Day One

(5-10 min) Activity 9.0 - In-Class: Review Synthesis Activity

Class discussion of students' submitted PowerPoint slides of items related to water sustainability in cities. The instructor could put all of the slides submitted by students into a single PowerPoint, which can be displayed during class and each slide very briefly discussed. This is a great way to review the material covered in previous units, and it gets students thinking about sustainable design options as they move into the final design project.

(20 min) Activity 9.1 - In-Class: Mind Map

Students are presented with an urban development scenario and they revise, edit and add to their mind map of the urban water system to create a final mind map for use in their group presentation. Building off the exercise in Unit 1, teams will need to build on their group mind map of the site system exploring the interconnections of the various water elements as well as other sub-systems that interact with the water system.

Urban Development Scenario

The urban design scenario for the Unit 9 group project is a 10-acre parcel of land with proposed suburban development. The goal is to design the development to include up to twenty-one 2,000 ft2 homes on 1/3-acre lots incorporating the urban water sustainability principles learned in the module, including implementation of rain gardens, pervious concrete, water-efficient landscaping, decentralized wastewater management, green roofs and rainwater harvesting. The group designs should strive to achieve sustainability goals and the cost of their design.

(45 min) Activity 9.2 - In-Class: Preliminary Plan

Students brainstorm strategies to make the water system of the proposed urban development sustainable and resilient. The preliminary plan will include (1) a sketch of the initial site design and (2) a listing of tasks to complete the project that includes identifying what the team knows (and from what unit), what the team needs to learn, how much time each task will take, and who will accomplish each task (this is the metacognition exercise and assessment).

Homework

Activity 9.3 - Homework: Individual Calculations and Report

Students work individually to prepare a three-page report with attached calculations and figures explaining their plan and proposed strategies for achieving a sustainable water design for the proposed scenario.

9.3.1 Outdoor Water Use

Students use concepts learned in Units 4 and 5 to develop a water-efficient landscape design for the yards and communal areas of the development. They calculate the water use if all landscaped areas are turf, then compare water use of their water-efficient design to the water use of the turf landscape.

9.3.2 Indoor Water Use

Students use concepts learned in Units 5 and 7 to reduce the indoor water consumption of the proposed development, then compare their proposal with typical values of indoor water use.

9.3.3 Catchment Scale Water Management

Students use concepts learned in Units 2 and 6 to compute the pre-development and post-development storm water runoff from the site. Then they use strategies learned in Units 5 and 6 to propose strategies to reduce the developed runoff and water quality impacts, with the goal of reducing the post-development runoff to pre-development levels.

9.3.4 Urban Climate

Students are asked to consider possible urban climate effects from the change in albedo following the development. And, considering what they learned in Unit 3, they are asked to propose strategies to reduce these impacts.

9.3.5 Extreme Events

Students use concepts learned in Unit 8 to propose strategies to increase the resilience of the proposed development to potential extreme flood and drought events.

Day Two

Activity 9.4 – In-Class: Group Planning

Students reconvene in groups and integrate their individual plans into a group design and organize their plan into a group presentation using flip charts/poster paper and markers that includes the following:

  • Site design
  • Plan for reducing indoor and outdoor water use and amount of savings for each compared with typical values, including justification for the strategies used
  • Plan for reducing the storm water runoff from the development to match the natural (pre-development) hydrograph and for minimizing negative water quality impacts
  • Potential urban climate impacts and strategies for minimizing impacts
  • Possible strategies to increase the resilience of the development to potential extreme flood and drought events
  • Assessment of how well the proposed design meets the goals of water sustainability in urban areas

Activity 9.5 – In-Class: Group Presentations

Activity 9.6 – In-Class: Peer and Self Review

  • Students review their peers' presentations and review their group's design using the peer-review version of the rubric (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 22kB Jul5 16)
    • This rubric is formatted with two rubrics per page, so that they can be cut in half after printing to reduce the amount of paper used.
    • This rubric can also be used to ask students to assess their own group design for self-reflection.

Teaching Notes and Tips

Instructors could make the group design a competition for which group comes up with the most sustainable and cheapest option. Costs are not explicitly given for the different aspects of the projects, but could be added if an instructor is interested.

Assessment

Assessment Rubrics

Each group will give a presentation of their proposed design. The presentation should include:

  • Selected strategies used to reduce water consumption and runoff
    • E.g., how many sq. ft. of pervious pavement, water-efficient landscaping, etc.
  • Net reduction in water consumption and runoff
    • How much less water does their proposed development use than a "typical" development?
  • Consideration of cost of selected strategies
  • Explanation of why they chose the strategies that they chose, how these strategies affect the impact of urban development on the hydrologic cycle and why their development proposal is more sustainable than a typical development.

Students will be assessed on the following:

  • Accuracy and completeness of computations
  • Demonstration of understanding of sustainability
  • Demonstration of understanding of the impact of urban development on the hydrologic cycle
  • Sustainability of design
    • Reduction in water consumption – what strategies did they implement? Can they explain their rationale for why they chose the strategies that they did? Did they iterate on different options?
    • Reduction in stormwater runoff – does the developed runoff = natural runoff? Can they explain their rationale for why they chose the strategies that they did? Did they iterate on different options?
  • Consideration of cost of design

Addressing Module Goals:

As the summative assessment for the module, Unit 9 addresses the goals of the module by requiring that students:

  • explain key concepts related to sustainability and water systems in cities (module goal)
  • apply knowledge and skills from atmospheric science, hydrologic science and biological science to plan for water sustainability in cities
  • use systems thinking to identify opportunities to enhance water system sustainability in cities
  • create feasible alternatives and recommend options to improve the sustainability of water systems in cities

How this summative assessment addresses InTeGrate rubric guiding principles?

  1. Addresses one or more geoscience-related grand challenges facing society?
    Water and sustainability are both grand challenges facing society
  2. Develops student ability to address interdisciplinary problems?
    This unit requires that students apply some of the basic science concepts learned in earlier units to an engineering and planning design problem
  3. Improves student understanding of the nature and methods of geoscience and developing geoscientific habits of mind?
    Impact of urban development on the natural hydrologic cycle
  4. Makes use of authentic and credible geoscience data to learn central concepts in the context of geoscience methods of inquiry?
    Climate data will be used to estimate runoff and urban climate impacts
  5. Incorporates systems thinking?
    Activity 9.1 requires a systems mind map

Already used some of these materials in a course?
Let us know and join the discussion »

Considering using these materials with your students?
Get advice for using GETSI modules in your courses »
Get pointers and learn about how it's working for your peers in their classrooms »

These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »