Technology assessment for wastewater treatment using multiple-attribute decision-making

A framework for technology assessment for wastewater treatment is proposed in this work. A case study of technology selection for high rise buildings in urban centres of India is used for evaluation and to test this framework. The multiple-attribute decision-making technique is used for ranking the alternatives. The three most commonly used wastewater treatment technologies viz., activated sludge process (ASP), sequencing batch reactors (SBR) and membrane bio-reactor (MBR) are evaluated. Seven criteria having indicators derived from life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) and criteria accounting for resource constraints, robustness of the system and sustainability are used for the evaluations. The technology assessment framework used in this work will help identify appropriate wastewater treatment technologies for various decision-making situations encountered while managing wastewaters. Importantly, this study validates the theory that it is the decision situation which decides the appropriateness of the technology and not the technology itself. Hence, the definition of appropriate technology given by Murphy et al. [4] is more convincing for water and sanitation technologies.