Wastewater Treatment Optimization Model for Developing World. I: Model Development

Abstract

This paper concerns techniques of systems analysis and operations research used to select the optimal—or most appropriate—wastewater treatment in the developing world. Existing treatment optimization models apply techniques of linear programming, dynamic programming and nonlinear mathematical programming but do not deal with the influences of sociocultural and environmental conditions. In this paper subjective or intangible factors are included with technical and economic considerations. Twenty parameters identified include technical, economic, environmental and sociocultural factors. A model including these 20 parameters is developed to rank a definite number (n) of wastewater treatment alternatives (decision variables). The model applies a recently developed systems analysis technique called the analytic hierarchy process to integrate a 20×20 parameter matrix with 20 n×n decision variable matrices to obtain the final ranking of the treatment alternatives. The model was tested with data from treatment pl...