Screening for real-time control potential of urban wastewater systems

The paper describes the application of the model SYNOPSIS to the integrated modelling of urban wastewater systems. The aim was to develop a screening procedure to establish the real-time control potential (RTC) of an urban catchment without the necessity of carrying out a detailed modelling assessment procedure. SYNOPSIS was applied to a series of ‘related’ catchments (with and without real-time control) that were similar in most respects but had differences in key parameters such as total storage volume and river dilution. It was found feasible to linearly regress control potential based on a river minimum dissolved oxygen concentration with the magnitude of these parameters. Extending the application of the procedure showed that optimisation for DO performance did not necessarily reduce river ammonia concentrations and could in fact increase them. Widening the parameter space was shown to reduce the simplicity of the procedure and the correlation coefficients in the regressions. The procedure was successfully applied to a range of real catchments and managed to identify sites with existing RTC as having high potential.