Development of a modular Environmental Decision Support System for the Integrated Management of the Urban Wastewater Cycle at River Basin Scale

Most of Urban Wastewater Systems (UWS) have been managed separately, without considering any interaction between sewer systems, Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) and the receiving waters. Nowadays, the conventional practice has changed, introducing the integrated management concept into the river basin scale. The goal of the project is to develop a modular Environmental Decision Support System (EDSS) to optimise the integrated management of the UWS based on a rule based system as the reasoning core and a Knowledge Base, easily represented by means of decision trees and fully opened. The EDSS, based upon expert knowledge and simulation results, will allow proposing the best solution for each scenario focusing the attention on the water quality of the system. The full paper presented in the conference will illustrate preliminary results of the two first tasks of the modular EDSS development. One of the most relevant advantages of this EDSS tool is that it will be useful for both simple and complex systems and will provide wastewater managers with a decision support tool for the application of the Water Framework Directive, allowing e.g. wastewater managers to consider the effects that an action on the UWS or on the WWTP will have on the performance of the whole system and finally on the receiving ecosystem.