Open Collections

Saleem, Sana

University of British Columbia

Recently, the use of indoor swimming pools and aquatic centres (ACs) have become very popular in cold regions of the world like Canada, which are serving thousands of visitors year-round. ACs provide opportunities for both recreation and physical activity, which potentially improves the quality of life and contribute towards community development. However, these useful facilities face serious performance-related challenges. Deteriorated water quality through various sources, especially the formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs) has increased the associated health issues. Moreover, an unhealthy indoor environment, high water and energy demands, high capital and operational costs, and common customer dissatisfaction are also major performance issues, which are challenging the sustainability of AC facilities. The management of AC functions with no impetus to assess or improve their facility performance in the absence of a structured performance assessment process. The present research is the first systematic effort for the development of a continuous performance improvement (CPI) framework to holistically assess, benchmark and improve the performance of ACs. This study is completed in four phases. Phase 1 proposed the CPI framework, identified and selected performance indicators (PIs). Phase 2 investigated the combined effects of design and management factors on DBPs concentrations using empirical models. Phase 3 developed a performance benchmarking model for self and comparative assessment. Phase 4 developed an optimization model to identify optimum levels of the operational process. The CPI framework adopted in this study holistically covers all the processes and operations of an AC facility. Further, the results of this research help in decision-making at different levels of the organizational hierarchy AC facilities. It can be used to infer the performance of the facility at multilevel (facility level, key components level and subcomponents level). The main outcome of this research is the development of the best management practices to improve performance and control DBPs in the indoor swimming environment and mitigate the potential human health risk. This study will assist AC managers in allocating available resources for both the short-term (e.g., efficient response to complaints) and long-term (e.g., replacing failed manually operated fixtures with the sensor-operated ones) improvement actions. This research will help the ACs in achieving the goal of sustainable development of recreational facilities in cold regions of the world.

Text

2021-09-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/79735

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/