Developing a model based decision support tool for the identification of sustainable treatment options for domestic wastewater

Balkema, A.J.; Preisig, Heinz A.; Otterpohl, Ralf; Lambert, A.J.D.; Weijers, Stefan

doi:10.2166/wst.2001.0434

Cited by 49 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Li and Guangwen (1990) selected best WWT alternatives to control river water pollution using multi-objective programming method and AHP technique. Balkema et al (2001) developed a methodology comparing WWT systems for assessing sustainability. Integer programming (having the objective function as a weighted sum of the sustainability indicators) was used to select best WWT options.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A hybrid life cycle assessment based fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach for evaluation and selection of an appropriate municipal wastewater treatment technology

Kamble

Singh

Kharat

2017

Euro-Mediterr J Environ Integr

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Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) has become a main area of research for dealing with complex environmental decision-making problems. In this paper, a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) based fuzzy MCDM methodology is developed for the evaluation and selection of appropriate municipal wastewater treatment (WTT) technology based on expert opinion and questionnaires. Further, the study also aims to identify the key evaluation criteria in the process of selecting WTT from a sustainability perspective. The use of fuzzy MCDM in wastewater management has the advantage of rendering subjective and implicit decision-making more objective and analytical, with its ability to accommodate both qualitative and quantitative data. This study provides a systematic approach towards WWT technology selection, in which four-phase procedure is proposed. First, the appropriate technology evaluation and selection criteria were derived from the literature, LCA and experts' opinion. Next, in the second stage, the fuzzy Delphi method was used to evaluate and screen the critical factors for the evaluation of technology alternatives by interviewing the experts. Twelve criteria including sustainability and those derived from LCA and life cycle costing were obtained consisting of both qualitative and quantitative criteria. In the third stage, the weights of the selection criteria as the measurable indices of the WWT technologies were determined by fuzzy pairwise comparison matrices of analytic hierarchy process. Finally, the fuzzy the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution technique was used for ranking the alternatives. The six most commonly used WWT technologies, viz. sequencing batch reactors (SBR), membrane bioreactor (MBR), moving bed bio-film reactor (MBBR), soil biotechnology, facultative aerated lagoon and activated sludge process were evaluated. The present study is the first study of its kind to develop a hybrid LCA-based fuzzy MCDM methodology for the selection of best WWT alternatives. Results illustrated that advanced technologies, MBR, SBR and MBBR are the preferred options with MBR the most preferred one followed by SBR and MBBR. The developed technology assessment framework enables decision makers to understand the complete evaluation and selection process better and provide a more accurate, effective, and systematic decision support framework. The framework is superior to existing methods since it has the capability of representing vague qualitative data and presenting all possible results with different degrees of membership. The framework developed and applied in this work will help identify appropriate WWT technologies for various decision-making situations faced while managing wastewaters.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A hybrid life cycle assessment based fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach for evaluation and selection of an appropriate municipal wastewater treatment technology

Kamble

Singh

Kharat

2017

Euro-Mediterr J Environ Integr

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“…The same applies to infrastructures, for which water resource management, including hydroelectric power schemes, is often considered (e.g., Eder et al 1997;Kodikara et al 2010), but rarely urban drinking and wastewater management (see review by Hajkowicz and Collins 2007 and an early example by Keeney et al 1996). From the water engineering sector, there is growing interest in comparing different infrastructure options using ''indicators'', usually with life cycle analysis (LCA) (Balkema et al 2001;Lundie et al 2004;Palme et al 2005). The indicators cover environmental and social criteria such as ''acceptance'' (of phosphorus products from sewage), ''reliability of service'' and ''working conditions'' (Palme et al 2005).…”

Section: Water Infrastructure Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2.2), but often found ''natural attributes'' based on engineering considerations. The integration of environmental and societal objectives with traditional technical and economic indicators is a recent development in engineering (e.g., Ashley et al 2008;Balkema et al 2001;Lundie et al 2004;Palme et al 2005). We hope to contribute to it by presenting our attributes in detail (Table 1; details in Lienert et al 2014).…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

Structured decision-making for sustainable water infrastructure planning and four future scenarios

Lienert

Scholten

Egger

et al. 2015

EURO Journal on Decision Processes

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Water supply and wastewater infrastructures are vital for human wellbeing and environmental protection; they adhere to the highest standards, are expensive and long-lived. Because they are also aging, substantial planning is required. Climate and socio-economic change create large planning uncertainties and simple projections of past developments are no longer adequate. This paper presents the initial phases of a structured decision-making (SDM) procedure which is designed to increase the sustainability of water infrastructure planning and includes various stakeholders in an exemplary Swiss case study. We evaluate the SDM approach critically based on stakeholder feedback, give general recommendations and provide ample material to make it applicable to other settings. We carried out 27 interviews and two stakeholder workshops. We identified important objectives for water infrastructure planning, including all three sustainability pillars and their respective attributes (indicators, benchmarks) to measure how well the objectives are achieved. We then created strategic decision alternatives, including ''business-as-usual'' upgrades of the central water supply and wastewater system as well as semi-to fully decentralized alternatives. To tackle future uncertainty, we developed four socio-demographic scenarios. We used these to test the robustness of decision alternatives in a later Multi-Attribute Utility Theory analysis. Additionally, J. Lienert (&) Á L. Scholten Á C. Egger Á M. Maurer we contribute to the topical discussion of combining scenario planning with multicriteria decision analysis and demonstrate how various scenarios can stimulate creativity when generating decision alternatives. Their internal consistency is ensured by rigorously specifying them using a strategy generation table. Our SDM procedure can be adapted to inform decisions about sustainable water infrastructures in other contexts.

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“…Strong sustainability, on the other hand, indicates that tradeoffs between environmental, social and economic dimensions of Systems analysis of wastewater treatment has been performed by several authors, e.g. [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Their approaches took a starting point in Life Cycle Assessment thinking, and produced interesting results.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A systems ecology view on sustainable wastewater treatment

Grönlund

Carlman

2017

Eco-Tech

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The environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability, were connected in a systems ecology model with focus on wastewater treatment. Life Cycle Assessment and similar approaches are the most common systems analysis models in the wastewater treatment context. These models are beneficial, but are not the only possible approach to systems analysis. The model in this paper showed that the social and economic dimensions were inseparable intertwined, and both of them dependent on the environmental dimension for ecosystem services in the form of natural resources and regenerating capacity. The holistic view, as applied by a systems ecology approach, put focus on how sustainable wastewater treatment are limited to deliver something that can be assimilated by the environmental systems, and in the best applications, produce something that is again useful to the society.

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Developing a model based decision support tool for the identification of sustainable treatment options for domestic wastewater

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

A hybrid life cycle assessment based fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach for evaluation and selection of an appropriate municipal wastewater treatment technology

A hybrid life cycle assessment based fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach for evaluation and selection of an appropriate municipal wastewater treatment technology

Structured decision-making for sustainable water infrastructure planning and four future scenarios

A systems ecology view on sustainable wastewater treatment

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