MAWEI - Metro Atlanta Water Energy Interdependencies

Interactive Sankey diagrams quantifying the coupled water and energy flows of the Metro Atlanta region.
MAWEI web dashboard: IWPRp.github.io/MAWEI

Overview

MAWEI processes publicly available and stakeholder-supplied data (not committed to this repository) on water supply, wastewater, and energy generation/consumption for Metro Atlanta and renders them as interactive, animated Sankey diagrams showing cross-sector interdependencies. The tool supports dynamic year-over-year comparison and export to self-contained HTML files for standalone sharing.

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Outputs

5-year annual energy, water, and combined energy-water flows for 15 counties and aggregated Metro Atlanta over 2020-2024

• 8 processed data files, 140,000 rows of data

  • Metro Water, County Water
  • Metro Energy, County Energy
  • Metro Energy Water, County Energy Water
  • Simplified variants (2)

• 2 Resolutions: Metro Atlanta aggregated, 15 counties individually

  • 3 Sectors: Energy, water, energy-water
    • Data: 6 data files
    • Diagrams
      • 1 metro + 15 counties = 16 * 3 = 48 core diagrams
      • Additional variants: e.g., simplified energy-water diagrams (16)
      • 64 diagrams across 2 formats (HTML + JSON) = 128 diagrams
  • 136 files across resolutions, sectors, data, Sankey diagrams, and variants

• Interface: open MAWEI.html

• Web: open https://IWPRp.github.io/MAWEI or serve the web/ folder on a local server using the serve.command file

Repository Structure

MAWEI/
├── functions.R                # Shared helpers, constants, Sankey plotting engine
├── launch.R                   # Entry-point script to launch the dashboard
├── data/                      # Processed input data (EIA, EPD, WMP, etc.)
├── R/
│   ├── flows_water.R          # Water supply, wastewater, and self-supply flows
│   ├── flows_energy.R         # Fuel, generation, and end-use energy flows
│   ├── flows_energy_water.R   # Combined energy-water Sankey (entry point)
│   ├── qc.R                   # Mass balance checks and logging
│   ├── prep_data.R            # Convert large and spatial datasets to smaller files
│   ├── analysis.R             # Post-analysis of combined energy-water flows
│   └── figures.R              # Supplementary maps and charts
├── outputs/files/             # Generated Sankey outputs
├── interface/                 # Local browser dashboard (HTML + JS + CSS)
└── web/                       # Web-based dashboard (HTML + JS + CSS)

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Quick Start

1 · Create the Sankey Diagrams

Open the project in RStudio (double-click MAWEI.Rproj), then source the entry-point script:

source("R/flows_energy_water.R")
source("R/qc.R")

2 · Open the Local Dashboard

Double-click or execute MAWEI.command (Linux/macOS) or MAWEI.bat (Windows) to launch the dashboard in your default browser.

Alternatively, simply source("launch.R") in RStudio or navigate to the project root in a terminal and run:

Rscript launch.R

This opens interface/MAWEI.html in your default browser with no server requirements.

3 · Run the Post-Analysis

Post-analysis of the combined energy-water flows creates additional synthesis and visualizations. Run:

source("R/prep_data.R")
source("R/analysis.R")
source("R/figures.R")

Scripts resolve all paths relative to their own location, so they work regardless of the session working directory.

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Data Sources

For the core MAWEI Sankeys (more datasets are used in the post-analysis):

Dataset	Source	Coverage
EIA SEDS	U.S. Energy Information Administration	2020-2024
EIA 860 / 923	EIA - generator & fuel data	2020-2024
Public Water Supply	GA Environmental Protection Division	Annual
Water Management Plans	GA EPD - surface, groundwater, wastewater	Annual
Self-supply (Agriculture)	GA EPD	Annual
Thermoelectric water use	USGS / EIA	Annual
Wastewater treatment	GA EPD NPDES	Annual
County FIPS	U.S. Census Bureau	2024

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Dependencies

R ≥ 4.0.0 with the following packages. Install all at once:

install.packages(c("dplyr","tidyr","readr","ggplot2","plotly","htmlwidgets",
                   "sf","RColorBrewer","ggsci","purrr","zoo"))

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Outputs

Sankey diagrams are saved to outputs/files/ when SAVE_FILES <- TRUE in functions.R:

Folder	Content
energy/	Fuel → generation → end-use energy flows
water/	Supply → treatment → demand → discharge flows
energy-water/	Combined energy-water interdependency diagram

File Name Pattern: NN_resolution_county_sector.html

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Contact

Open an issue or contact Hassan Niazi at hassan.niazi@pnnl.gov or Kelsey Semrod at kelsey.semrod@pnnl.gov.

Team: Hassan Niazi, Kelsey Semrod, Kendall Mongird, Jennie Rice, IWPR Team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Atlanta Stakeholders

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Developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in support of the Integrated Water Power Resilience (IWPR) Project
Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Hydropower and Hydrokinetics Office (H2O), Energy-Water Resources (EWR) Program.