Development of a Real-Time Intelligent Platform for Wastewater Influent Forecasting

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Municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) require reliable influent forecast for the design, operation, and control of wastewater treatment processes. Inaccurate estimates of influent flow and load could easily lead to poor treatment performance and high operating cost. The complex collection and transport processes of urban effluent, as well as uncertainties arising from aging infrastructure, make it a daunting challenge for WWTP managers to generate reliable wastewater influent forecasts. In this project, a real-time intelligent platform for wastewater influent forecasting will be developed. This entails four tasks: 1) develop a pattern mining layer to characterize the temporal fluctuations in wastewater inflow and pollution loading; 2) develop an intelligent forecasting layer to generate reliable influent forecasts; 3) develop a real-time visualization layer to provide visualization of wastewater data and forecasts; and 4) integrate and commercialize the developed forecasting platform. The proposed research represents a unique contribution to the development of influent forecasting methodologies for supporting WWTP management. It will provided specialized training for highly qualified personnel. The students will gain expertise in data processing, time series analysis, pattern mining, and machine learning techniques, which are highly valued in consulting and academia. This work will be completed collaboratively between Hydromantis Environmental Software Solutions, Inc. and the applicant's research group at McMaster University. Hydromantis is one of the Canada's leading companies in wastewater treatment simulation. This project will allow them to integrate the developed forecasting platform into their current software products, which will give them a significant market advantage. The impacts of this work will be economically significant, as it will provide valuable technical support for making the maximum use of the country's existing and future wastewater treatment facilities.