Effluent quality-based ranking of sewage treatment plants using multicriteria decision making technique.

Water pollution control agencies worldwide face the complex challenge of ensuring the efficient operation of sewage treatment plants (STPs) to protect water bodies receiving their effluent as well as for reuse. However, evaluating the performance of these plants is difficult due to multiple criteria involved. Further, while previous studies have focused on evaluating the efficiency of individual plants, it remains unclear how the effluent quality of STPs affect the water quality of receiving bodies without relying on the complex simulation-optimization models (such as waste load allocation) to understand the cause-and-effect relationships.