PCGS Internship Blog

COLIN LEONARD

After nearly a full week at UNESCO-IHE, I feel as though I am beginning to make some headway. I’ve managed to find, review, categorize, and annotate over 260 research articles, dissertations, papers and conference presentations on most of my research question categories. It turns out that much of what I want to know is contained in papers delivered during the various desalination conferences such as AWWA, D&E EDS, IWA/MTC, and IDA over the last seven years. Many thanks to Sergio Salinas for providing access to this very deep well of knowledge.

While many of the conference papers eventually make it into the general population, their timeliness in a rapidly emerging playing field is critical. Perhaps the most significant concept emerging from the research to date is the importance of a robust decision-making tool in the development of an integrated water system. There are several models emerging, but perhaps the most impressive, in terms of its comprehensive and adaptive nature is the
multi-criteria analysis (MCA) tool that has been adopted by individuals and organizations involved with environmental management.

The MCA tool appeals to me, as a practitioner of Lean Manufacturing and the Crane Business system because it is highly organized in its approach, but also because it incorporates qualitative (non-metric) data. I want to adopt and adapt this tool as a primary goal of my stated research objectives which was to provide a tool for water system designers, typically engineers at engineering/procurement/contracting (EPC) firms, to manage the complex interplay between economic, environmental, and socio-political variables. The sequential nature of the MCA is intuitive and follows steps in formal problem-solving kaizen that I already understand; 1) Problem Definition,
2) Baseline Data, 3) Graphic Evaluation, 4) Standardization, 5) Ranking, and 6) Sensitivity Analysis.

I believe that I can easily adapt my current problem-solving tool set to provide engineers with a framework for dealing with water treatment system effluent streams within the rubric of environmental impact analysis (EIA), including the expansion of Crane Water University (CWU) to provide the necessary training to use the tool. The CWU module is another main goal of my research; to provide sufficient background, current state (including a review of case studies, technologies, costing models), and emerging technologies, and emerging trends in policy and regulation.

Another factor emerging from my research so far is the geospatial distribution of case studies and knowledge. I began my research with the aim of capturing best management practices and other information from six European countries + the USA, but the literature review has expanded the geographic reach to include 15 countries and counting. A third goal of my research was to pull together the best thinking from Europe and the US, but this now also includes the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and India.

For a given water problem, and water appears always to be a local (localized) problem, the trend appears to be the application of a suite of technologies and techniques, and the diversity of approaches, often along geospatial lines, should provide a wider array of possible solutions to individualized water resource problems.