The decision support tool for authorities and private investors is one of the important deliverables of the Nereus project.
The workshop has a significant role on coming to an agreement with the partners and the stakeholders for the further development and design of the decision support tool (DST). The 30 participants in the workshop discussed the potential and the relevance of using a decision support tool for wastewater recovery and gave feedback on the proposed framework. Keynote speakers provided information about the recent innovations and possibilities of resource recovery from wastewater and the needs of a useful decision support tool in the selection of the most appropriate technology.
Criteria on technology and sustainability
An important topic during the workshop was the selection criteria of various technologies with respect to sustainability on both economic, environmental, technical and socio-cultural criteria.
The panel discussion and the round-table discussions validated the current conceptual framework of the DST and gave the developers from the University of Portsmouth better insight in the criteria that are currently being used in the decision-making process in the wastewater treatment context. At the same time it offered a generic idea for the design of the technical knowledge base which is supposed to feed the tool.
Conclusions
After the panel discussion, it was decided to develop a prototype of the DST by using the information available in the literature. In order to increase the efficiency of the tool, this should subsequently be improved during the meetings with the NEREUS partners.
The creation of the technology database making use of mathematical modelling tools will be a collaboration of HZ University (NL) and University of Portsmouth.