Abstract
Despite considerable efforts to improve water management, India is becoming increasingly water stressed due to multiple factors, including climate change, increasing population, and urbanization. We address one of the most challenging problems in the design of water treatment plants: how to select a suitable technology for a specific scenario or context. The process of decision making first requires the identification of feasible treatment configurations based on various objectives and criteria. In addition, the multiplicity of water quality parameters and design variables adds further complexity to the process. In this study, we propose a novel Decision Support Tool (DST), designed to address and support the above challenges. In this user-friendly tool, both Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO) methods are employed. The integration of MCDA with MOO facilitates the generation of feasible drinking water treatment solutions, identifies optimal options, and ultimately, improves the process of decision making. This implemented approach has been tested for different contexts, including for different types of raw water sources and system implementation scales. The results show that this tool can enhance the process of decision making, supporting the user (e.g., stakeholders and decision makers) to implement the most suitable water treatment systems, keeping in view the trade-offs.
Highlights
Water scarcity is becoming a major issue in today’s world, affecting every continent in different aspects [1]
This paper presents a novel decision support system, WETSUiT
(WatEr Treatment decision SUpport Tool) to assist decision makers in selecting a suitable drinking water solution. In this increasingly complex world, especially in developing countries, such a decision support tool is required to validate the chosen technologies based on specific regulations to assess whether the potential technologies or solutions meet the drinking water standards or guidelines
Summary
Water scarcity is becoming a major issue in today’s world, affecting every continent in different aspects [1]. Statistics from The Water Project showed that one out of every five children under the age of five died due to a water-related disease and 1 in 9 people worldwide have no access to potable drinking water [2]. The focus of this paper, with about 16 percent of the world’s population, has access to only 4 percent of the world’s freshwater supply, of which only 60 percent. Only 88% of the population has access to an improved water source [7]. It is estimated that 21% of communicable diseases in India are related to unsafe water [8]. India requires an improved water infrastructure system and utilization of available water treatment systems to ensure the population receives sufficient potable water
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