title: Assessment of wastewater treatment alternatives for small communities: An analytic network process approach.
abstract: The selection of the most appropriate wastewater treatment (WWT) technology is a complex problem since many alternatives are available and many criteria are involved in the decision-making process. To deal with this challenge, the analytic network process (ANP) is applied for the first time to rank a set of seven WWT technology set-ups for secondary treatment in small communities. A major advantage of ANP is that it incorporates interdependent relationships between elements. Results illustrated that extensive technologies, constructed wetlands and pond systems are the most preferred alternatives by WWT experts. The sensitivity analysis performed verified that the ranking of WWT alternatives is very stable since constructed wetlands are almost always placed in the first position. This paper showed that ANP analysis is suitable to deal with complex decision-making problems, such as the selection of the most appropriate WWT system contributing to better understand the multiple interdependences among elements involved in the assessment.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ingeniería Hidráulica y Ambiental, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile; Escuela de Arquitectura e Instituto de Estudios Urbanos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, El Comendador 1916, Santiago, Chile; Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable CONICYT/FONDAP/15110020, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile. Electronic address: mmolinos@uc.cl.
authors.forename: María
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Molinos-Senante
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Economía Aplicada (Matemáticas), Universidad de Málaga, Campus El Ejido, 29071, Málaga, Spain. Electronic address: trinidad@uma.es.
authors.forename: Trinidad
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Gómez
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Economía Aplicada (Matemáticas), Universidad de Málaga, Campus El Ejido, 29071, Málaga, Spain. Electronic address: rafael.caballero@uma.es.
authors.forename: Rafael
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Caballero
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Economics, University of Valencia, Campus dels Tarongers, 46022 Valencia, Spain. Electronic address: francesc.hernandez@uv.es.
authors.forename: Francesc
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hernández-Sancho
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics for Economics, University of Valencia, Campus dels Tarongers, 46022 Valencia, Spain. Electronic address: ramon.sala@uv.es.
authors.forename: Ramón
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sala-Garrido
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods; D003657:Decision Making; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid / Q000379:methods*; D062065:Wastewater / Q000032:analysis* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D053833:Wetlands
chemical_list: D062065:Wastewater
keywords: Analytic network process (ANP); Multi-criteria decision-making; Municipal wastewater; Sustainability; Wastewater treatment technologies