A suitability evaluation tool for siting wastewater treatment facilities in new urban developments

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a spatial decision-support tool based on soft computing that assists the optimal siting of wastewater treatment technologies within the context of new urban developments, through the creation of suitability maps. The tool is based on multi-criteria decision analysis and fuzzy logic, allowing the inclusion of both uncertainty and of the decision-makers' attitude towards risk in the decision-making process. The paper describes the attributes influencing the siting of wastewater treatment infrastructure and presents a method for using these to generate composite siting suitability maps for a given development site and propose specific locations maximizing the combined suitability index. Extensive sensitivity analysis has been undertaken and the results discussed. The proposed system architecture integrates three widely used software platforms (ArcView GIS, Matlab and MS Excel) into a flexible and user-friendly decision-support tool that can easily be adapted to different spatial decision environments.

Keywords:

• Fuzzy logic
• Multi-criteria decision analysis
• Spatial decision support
• Suitability evaluation
• Uncertainty
• Wastewater treatment

Acknowledgements

This work is developed within the ‘Water Cycle Management for New Developments’ (WaND) project [www.wand.uk.net] funded under the Engineering & Physical Science Research Council's ‘Sustainable Urban Environment’ Programme by EPSRC, the UK Government and industrial collaborators.