WorkPackage 4

WP4: Concepts and design tools for sustainable, integrated water and wastewater management

AIMS OF A CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

- Acquire expertise to be able to select a better alternative in a future real opportunity,
- Contribute to the development of the DSS that will be used in the future real cases
- Define clear criteria to monitor and assess the degree of success of the pilot projects
- Develop an Economic Model

What is a DSS ?

"DSS (Design Support System)":
This term describes a tool that helps the user to identify good (possibly best) solutions for problems similar to those dealt with in the case studies. The tool has to be flexible, i.e. it has to support cases where almost no information is available and very scarce computer literacy is performed by the end-users. But it must also support cases where, on the contrary, there is a fair-to-good information base and computer literacy, as is the case of significant areas in our MEDA partner countries. This means that the DSS will certainly comprise
- a computer based system (using GIS, DB and possibly some modelling capability based on the Internet)
- some paper handbook or the like with simple formsheets and graphs.

Objective of the DSS:
The DSS will guide the user to consider the different SWM options, integrate them in a design and/or planning activity and provide a logic procedure to compare project alternatives.

The users of the DSS
This involves decision makers (representatives, population, traditional authorities, water departments) in order to identify the most suitable solution and to show its relevant impacts (economic, environmental, social) in a sustainability framework.

What kind of DSS will be realized by the ZER0-M

We'd like to build a flexible tool that helps the planner/designer to identify good SWM solutions and integrate them in a designer and/or planning activity. The DSS is characterized by:

- An Experience data base
- Simple Expert Sistem
- Design support (GIS and DB)

Experience (data)base
- It consists of a list of technical options useful to set up alternatives of solutions
- It contains a set of experiences within or outside the Zero-M project
- The experience base is accessible via Internet for a fast and better consult)

Simple DSS/Expert System
The Expert System (ES) consists of a list of questions and organized answers (logic tree, decision tree) suggested to orient the planner/designer to proceed in the best way in order to:
acquire the minimum relevant information, such as the minimum information threshold
understand the relevant features of the problem
conceive the most significant alternatives
develop a simple but effective evaluation procedure
provide the relevant information to make a decision
guide in the design of a monitoring system and procedure

This system would constantly refer to the experience base.
example of the Logic tree

Design Support System
The GIS tool will support:
sustainable low-tech data acquisition and integration
- integration of additional data through the digitalisation of objects
- interactions like queries, selections, distance measurements
- visualisation of all data
Design models: to determine the size of selected options (e.g. ?how much area do I need to reduce a given BOD load by 30% with a wetland, for a given temperature??)

Evaluation module: the tools useful to implement the evaluation procedure (e.g. ?in a given situation is better to separate gray and black waters or to treat them

Economic model

The economic model is part of a complex DSS (Design Support System). The economic model is helpful for planners and decision makers to be able to immediately realise monetary effects of planned activities.

The complexity of this approach requires the development of a computer supported method which has to be adapted to the demands of sustainable water management. At the same time this complexity is the reason why the economic model is a supporting tool within the decision process. However, decisions cannot be made merely through activation of the programme.

The main goal of the economic model is to show the monetary effects of different project alternatives (technical options).

These monetary effects are for example:

Investment costs
Operation costs and revenues
Maintenance costs

In a first step all possible technical options have to be defined and cost-functions for these alternatives must be established. The economic model should be an open system that can be modified directly by the user (technical planner / designer) who will be enabled to define ?new possible strategies?. This means that it will be developed on a platform that most people know, similar to Excel; as a drawback, this implies that it will not have a very user-friendly interface.

The user of the system has to design different alternatives (package of technical options) for the investigation area. The economic model shows the monetary effects of such alternatives. The output of the economic model is one part of the input of the multi-criteria evaluation module.