A new approach to assess risk in water treatment using the belief function framework

A methodology is proposed for assessing the risk to produce non-compliant potable water, taking into account the quality of the raw water, as well as characteristics of the treatment unit and different failure modes. Belief functions are used to describe expert knowledge of treatment process efficiency, failure rates, latency times and raw water quality. Evidential reasoning provides mechanisms to combine this information and assess the plausibility of non-compliant water production. This approach may be used by treatment plant designers to choose the optimal architecture, given a user-defined level of residual risk.