Demonstration of a tool for automatic learning and re-use of knowledge in the activated sludge process.

Wastewater treatment plant operators encounter complex operational problems related to the activated sludge process and usually respond to these by applying their own intuition and by taking advantage of what they have learnt from past experiences of similar problems. However, previous process experiences are not easy to integrate in numerical control, and new tools must be developed to enable re-use of plant operating experience. The aim of this paper is to investigate the usefulness of a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach to apply learning and re-use of knowledge gained during past incidents to confront actual complex problems through the IWA/COST Benchmark protocol. A case study shows that the proposed CBR system achieves a significant improvement of the benchmark plant performance when facing a high-flow event disturbance.     

Analysis of enterococci using portable testing equipment for developing countries--variance of Azide NutriDisk medium under variable time and temperature.

This report compares the enterococci count on samples obtained with Azide NutriDisk (AND) (sterile, dehydrated culture medium) and Slanetz and Bartley (SB) medium when exposed to a variable in incubation time and temperature. Three experiments were performed to examine the recovery of enterococci on AND and SB media using membrane filtration with respect to: (a) incubation time; (b) incubation temperature; and (c) a combination of the two. Presumptive counts were observed at 37, 41, 46 and 47 degrees C and at 20, 24, 28 and 48 h. These were compared to AWWA standard method 9230 C (44 degrees C, 44 h). Samples were confirmed using Kanamycin Aesculin Azide (KAA) agar. Friedman's ANOVA and Students t-test analysis indicated higher enumeration of enterococci when grown on AND (p = 0.45) than SB (p = < 0.001) at all temperatures with a survival threshold at 47 degrees C. Significant results for AND medium were noted at 20 h (p = 0.021), 24 h (p = 0.278) and 28 h (p = 0.543). The study concluded that the accuracy of the AND medium at a greater time and temperature range provided flexibility in incubator technology making it an appropriate alternative to SB medium for monitoring drinking water using field testing kits in developing countries.     

Enhancing urban infrastructure investment planning practices for a changing climate.

Climate change raises many concerns for urban water management because of the effects on all aspects of the hydrological cycle. Urban water infrastructure has traditionally been designed using historical observations and assuming stationary climatic conditions. The capability of this infrastructure, whether for storm-water drainage, or water supply, may be over- or under-designed for future climatic conditions. In particular, changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events will have the most acute effect on storm-water drainage systems. Therefore, it is necessary to take future climatic conditions into consideration in engineering designs in order to enhance water infrastructure investment planning practices in a long time horizon. This paper provides the initial results of a study that is examining ways to enhance urban infrastructure investment planning practices against changes in hydrologic regimes for a changing climate. Design storms and intensity-duration-frequency curves that are used in the engineering design of storm-water drainage systems are developed under future climatic conditions by empirically adjusting the general circulation model output, and using the Gumbel distribution and the Chicago method. Simulations are then performed on an existing storm-water drainage system from NE Calgary to investigate the resiliency of the system under climate change.     

Benchmark simulation Model no 2 in Matlab-simulink: towards plant-wide WWTP control strategy evaluation.

In this paper, implementation of the Benchmark Simulation Model No 2 (BSM2) within Matlab-Simulink is presented. The BSM2 is developed for plant-wide WWTP control strategy evaluation on a long-term basis. It consists of a pre-treatment process, an activated sludge process and sludge treatment processes. Extended evaluation criteria are proposed for plant-wide control strategy assessment. Default open-loop and closed-loop strategies are also proposed to be used as references with which to compare other control strategies. Simulations indicate that the BM2 is an appropriate tool for plant-wide control strategy evaluation.     

Analysis of phosphorus removal and anaerobic selector performance in a full-scale activated sludge process in Singapore.

This paper analyses the performance of the anaerobic selector (A/O process) in a full-scale activated sludge process receiving mostly industrial sewage discharge (> 60%) in Singapore. In addition to the sludge settleability, enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) was studied. The sludge volume index (SVI) reduced from 200 to 80 ml g(-1) and foaming was suppressed significantly, indicating the effectiveness of the anaerobic selector in improving sludge settleability. The phosphorus removal efficiency was 66%, and 7.5 mg HAc-COD was consumed per mg PO4(3-) -P removed. In the anaerobic compartment, 31% of the SCOD and 73% of the acetic acid in the settled sewage were removed with PO4(3-) -P release of 14.1 mg PO4(3-)-P l(-1). The linear correlation between PO4(3-) -P release in the anaerobic compartment and PO4(3-) -P uptake in the aerobic compartment indicates that there is about 0.8 mg PO4(3-) -P release in the anaerobic compartment per mg PO34(3-) -P uptake in the aerobic compartment. The fates of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and its short chain acids (SCAs) in the process were studied and discussed.     

Tracking influent inorganic suspended solids through wastewater treatment plants.

From an experimental and theoretical investigation of the continuity of influent inorganic suspended solids (ISS) along the links connecting the primary settling tank (PST), fully aerobic or N removal activated sludge (AS) and anaerobic and aerobic sludge digestion unit operations, it was found that the influent wastewater (fixed) ISS concentration is conserved through primary sludge anaerobic digestion, activated sludge and aerobic digestion unit operations. However, the measured ISS flux at different stages through a series of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) unit operations is not equal to the influent ISS flux, because the ordinary heterotrophic organisms (OHO) biomass contributes to the ISS flux by differing amounts depending on the active fraction of the VSS solids at that stage.     

Sampling for representative micropollutant loads in sewer systems.

Most commercially available auto-sampling devices do not support a continuous flow-proportional sampling mode, which would conceptually be the best for collecting representative composite samples. Instead different discrete sampling modes are available. Household chemicals can show considerable random short-term variations. With the anticorrosive benzotriazole, relating to a middle-frequent household activity, we show that, besides an accurate flow meter, mainly three factors are decisive for the representativeness of a substance's average load: the substance's load pattern, the sampling frequency and the length of the composite sample. When the sampling intervals are 10 minutes or longer, errors in the order of +/-40% (standard deviation) or more have to be accepted, if the substance of interest is contained in a low number of wastewater pulses (i.e., the level of household activity). This particularly holds true for specific pharmaceuticals e.g. carbamazepine. Ammonium would be less critical, because it relates to a larger number of sources in the same catchment.     

One-dimensional GIS-based model compared with a two-dimensional model in urban floods simulation.

A GIS-based one-dimensional flood simulation model is presented and applied to the centre of the city of N?mes (Gard, France), for mapping flow depths or velocities in the streets network. The geometry of the one-dimensional elements is derived from the Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The flow is routed from one element to the next using the kinematic wave approximation. At the crossroads, the flows in the downstream branches are computed using a conceptual scheme. This scheme was previously designed to fit Y-shaped pipes junctions, and has been modified here to fit X-shaped crossroads. The results were compared with the results of a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model based on the full shallow water equations. The comparison shows that good agreements can be found in the steepest streets of the study zone, but differences may be important in the other streets. Some reasons that can explain the differences between the two models are given and some research possibilities are proposed.     

Model Selection for Unsupervised Learning of Visual Context

This study addresses the problem of choosing the most suitable probabilistic model selection criterion for unsupervised learning of visual context of a dynamic scene using mixture models. A rectified Bayesian Information Criterion (BICr) and a Completed Likelihood Akaike’s Information Criterion (CL-AIC) are formulated to estimate the optimal model order (complexity) for a given visual scene. Both criteria are designed to overcome poor model selection by existing popular criteria when the data sample size varies from small to large and the true mixture distribution kernel functions differ from the assumed ones. Extensive experiments on learning visual context for dynamic scene modelling are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of BICr and CL-AIC, compared to that of existing popular model selection criteria including BIC, AIC and Integrated Completed Likelihood (ICL). Our study suggests that for learning visual context using a mixture model, BICr is the most appropriate criterion given sparse data, while CL-AIC should be chosen given moderate or large data sample sizes.     

An architecture to support scalable distributed virtual environment systems on grid

A Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) system offers a computer-generated virtual world in which individuals located at different places in the physical world can interact with one another. In order to achieve real-time response for a large user base, DVE systems need to have a scalable architecture. In this paper, we present the design of a grid-enabled service oriented framework for facilitating the construction of scalable DVE systems on computing grids. A service component called “gamelet” is proposed, whose distinctive mark is its high mobility for supporting dynamic load sharing. We propose a gamelet migration protocol which can ensure the transparency and efficiency of gamelet migration, and an adaptive gamelet load-balancing (AGLB) algorithm for making gamelet redistribution decisions at runtime. The algorithm considers both the synchronization costs of the DVE system and network latencies inherent in the grid nodes. The activities of the users and the heterogeneity of grid resources are also considered in order to carry out load sharing more effectively. We evaluate the performance of the proposed mechanisms through a multiplayer online game prototype implemented using the Globus toolkit. The results show that our approach can achieve faster response times and higher throughputs than some existing approaches. This research is supported in part by the China National Grid project (863 program) and the HKU Foundation Seed Grant 28506002.