Water Expert: a conceptualized framework for development of a rule-based decision support system for distribution system decontamination

Abstract

Abstract. Significant drinking water contamination events pose a serious threat to public and environmental health. Water utilities often must make timely, critical decisions without evaluating all facets of the incident, as the data needed to enact informed decisions are inevitably dispersant and disparate, originating from policy, science, and heuristic contributors. Water Expert is a functioning hybrid decision support system (DSS) and expert system framework, with emphases on meshing parallel data structures to expedite and optimize the decision pathway. Delivered as a thin-client application through the user's web browser, Water Expert's extensive knowledgebase is a product of inter-university collaboration that methodically pieced together system decontamination procedures through consultation with subject matter experts, literature review, and prototyping with stakeholders. This paper discusses development of Water Expert, analyzing the development process underlying the DSS and the system's existing architecture specifications.