RESILIENCE ANALYSIS OF DECENTRALISED WASTEWATER TREATMENT SYSTEMS IN UTTARAKHAND

Abstract

India is rapidly developing country and with rapid growth, its demand for clean water and sanitation is also increasing manifold. For rapidly urbanizing country like India, the water scarcity is increasing at alarming rate. Rising water crisis can be to some extend be minimized by optimally utilizing wastewater in India. Lack of proper infrastructure and awareness has resulted in underutilization of wastewater resource in India. At present India is predominantly dependent on centralized wastewater treatment systems wherein, wastewater from all households is collected in large and bulk pipeline networks, which is transported to a long distance to one centralized located treatment plant. But due to rapidly exploding population and industrialization in the country, the construction, maintenance and operation of the centralized wastewater treatment systems with sewer networks is proving to be a challenging task.What is required for developing country like India is to adopt a mix approach of existing centralized waste water treatment systems as well as constructing new decentralized waste water treatment systems to reduce the gap in waste water generated and waste water treated. It will also reduce the problems of water scarcity and increasing water pollution in India. Engineering systems like wastewater treatment systems we build today are expected to work for longer duration of at least 25-30 years. So in this lifetime it is expected to face wide range of challenges. Adding resilience to wastewater treatment will have an additional cost in an initial investment but in longer term, it will save on cost due to reduction in frequency of failures and breakdowns. Resilience analysis of system is relatively new term in engineering system. Not much work has been done to quantify the resilience. But to predict the effect of disturbances on waste water system and reduce the maintenance cost of the system, we need to study and quantify the resilience of the wastewater treatment systems.