New Strategies for Technology Assessment
and Implementation
James Malley, UNH (Project Lead)
Objectives
The overall goal of this project is to develop, refine and disseminate a risk reduction based strategy that will facilitate improvements in the effectiveness and sustainability of small drinking water systems throughout the U.S. This strategy will focus on advancing the implementation of innovative water treatment technologies within small water systems.
Experimental Approach
The project will be broken into six separate activities. Activity 1 will develop a risk index that can be used to assess treatment technologies using principles of risk reduction, reliability, and resilience. Activity 2 will incorporate the risk index into an overall sustainability assessment and index that comparatively determines the most sustainable drinking water treatment options for small community water systems. Activity 3 will develop and test a multi-criteria decision support methodology to reconcile the technical, managerial, and financial (TMF) capacity limitations of small drinking water systems. This methodology will incorporate risk and sustainability into the decision support methodology. Activity 4 will develop new approaches to training that allow small system stakeholders to understand, apply, and approve innovative technologies. Activity 5 will determine if states with very remote rural communities (e.g., Alaska) should embark on a regional alliance and integrated future development strategy to reduce microbial and chemical (DBP) risk. Activity 6 will demonstrate the effectiveness of Activities 1 to 5 through a timely case study of applying polychromatic medium pressure UV technology with innovative low wavelength monitoring Groundwater Rule compliance.
Expected Results
The project will develop risk and sustainability indices, an innovative decision support methodology (including the special case of very remote rural communities) and new approaches and techniques for small system stakeholder training. In addition, an innovative low wavelength UV sensor will be tested to assist small system stakeholders with applying UV disinfection to comply with the Groundwater Rule. The results will drive the risk reduction based, sustainability approach as well as the decision making and training techniques used for all other Center projects that will field test innovative technologies at actual small system sites.