Development of an Evaluative Tool for Selecting Appropriate Water Treatment Technologies for Developing World Communities
Open Access
- Author:
- Baskaran, Shruthi
- Area of Honors:
- Interdisciplinary in Civil Engineering and Engineering Leadership Development
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dr. Richard J Schuhmann, Thesis Honors Advisor
Dr. Richard J Schuhmann, Thesis Supervisor
Eric Todd Donnell, Thesis Honors Advisor
Andras Gordon, Faculty Reader
Dr. Richard J Schuhmann, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- developing world
water treatment
evaluative framework
computer program
WaTTS
Water Treatment Technology Selector - Abstract:
- Over 1 billion people in the world people in the world lack access to safe drinking water from an improved source. Field workers and development professionals confronted with community-scale water quality challenges are often left to depend upon personal experience or institutional memory for design guidance and development. Such subjectivity in the design process can lead to failure of the treatment design upon implementation and negatively affect the standard of living and health of the people using the facility. While published guidance exists, there is a distinct lack of an integrated, multi-scale decision support tool for potable water treatment system design. Objective standardization of the design process reflecting geographic, cultural and economic appropriateness can improve the standard of living of people in these communities and ensure better quality drinking water. Such an objective decision making tool broadens access to information while simultaneously simplifying the design process. This thesis presents such an evaluative tool to facilitate community development entities in their selection of the most optimal water treatment systems such that the systems will not only be technically efficient but also culturally appropriate for use in the developing regions of the world. This tool – Water Treatment Technology Selector (WaTTS), is presented both within the thesis algorithmically and externally as an interactive software tool.