Development and Application of a User-Friendly Decision Support Tool for Optimization of Wastewater Treatment Technologies in India

The selection of suitable wastewater treatment solutions is a complex problem that requires the careful consideration of many factors. With water at a premium and water consumption increasing, India is facing a challenging time ahead, requiring effective water treatment solutions. The Wastewater Decision Support Optimizer (WiSDOM) presented here is a user-friendly software package designed to aid in the formulation and configuration of wastewater systems in developing countries such as India. WiSDOM employees advanced multi-objective optimization and decision analysis techniques to identify optimal wastewater treatment options. It has been demonstrated that WiSDOM can adapt to a wide array of scenarios, considering a range of contributing factors (technical, environmental, economic and social), enabling stakeholders to make more informed decisions. The tool was applied to three different scenarios to test its functionalities and assess treatment technologies potential for different contexts. Initial results suggest that it is possible to automatically generate feasible distinct treatment strategies for user-defined contexts/constraints.

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