Table 1. Example Latin America: Water situation in selected
Countries
Source: 1UNICEF, Sept.
2006 [3]
DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTERACTIVE
ENGINEERING TOOL FOR TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNICAL INNOVATION RELATED TO INTEGRATED
WATER MANAGEMENT IN DECENTRALIZED REGIONS
Department of
Process Technology, Fraunhofer Institute UMSICHT
Osterfelder Str. 3, 46047
Email: volkmar.keuter@umsicht.fraunhofer.de
Abstract: The engineering tool of the interactive platform www.aqua-latina.info
represents an innovative project for the establishment of integrated water
management concepts under exclusive participation of German Small and Medium
sized Enterprises (SME). One target of the concept is the creation of an
interactive Internet platform, which contains not only general technical
information of the companies but also rather calculation and evaluation routines
for planning specific local water supply and water treatment processes.
Fundamentals are phenomenological analysis of established water technologies
and from this derived efficiency portfolios. So, a direct linking with local
needs in different regions can be realized worldwide.
I. INTRODUCTION
The environmental program
of the United Nations (UNEP) points out in its Global Environmental Outlook
(geo 2000) that the fresh water crisis represents the largest ecological threat
- directly after the dangers of the climatic change [4]. According to an assessment of the German Federal Ministry for Economic
Cooperation and Development (BMZ) the crucial factors for this relationship are
the following four facts [1]:
§
The increasing
world population leads together with the economic growth and the social
development to a rise of the demand for water, both for the direct human use as
well as for agriculture and industry.
§
The supply of
useful water decreases. Due to the contamination by house and industrial
wastewater as well as by inappropriate and excessive use of fertilizers and
agrarian chemicals the water quality decreases.
§
The waste of
water increases. Both in the agriculture and within the urban supply the losses
of water are immense.
§
The costs of
opening new water sources are continuously rising. The use of groundwater,
water transportation or seawater desalination - projects which are discussed in
the Gulf States and in the Middle East Region - is unaffordable for poor parts
of the population in many regions. E.g. environmental damage of seawater
desalination due to increasing salt residues or exploitation of transboundary
groundwater resources lead to extreme types or might produce conflicts.
In contrast to the European
water supply and wastewater disposal structure, which is based on traditionally
grown infrastructure and supported by legal framework, the water management
(e.g. in Latin America) is focusing severe problems: in many cases a wastewater
disposal in rural areas does not exist
as well as, the situation of the water supply is considered in many places as
critical to endangered. According to estimations of the Brazilian Ministry of
Health 30 % of the deaths of children under one year and 65 % of the
hospitalizations of children less than ten years are lead back on the
insufficient entrance to clean water.
Table 1. Example Latin America: Water situation in selected
Countries
Source: 1UNICEF, Sept.
2006 [3]
The water difficulty is also
rising in Asia to a highly explosive topic. According to the latest UNICEF
report on Water and Sanitation [3] only every second Asian has access to
improved drinking-water sources and improved sanitation. Two thirds of the East
Asian rural population has no access to improved sanitation.
II. PROCEDURE
Objective of the project is
to modify innovative and decentralized key components as for example submerged
membranes for the treatment of surface water and miniaturized activated carbon
filters. Even the energy production should be modified in such a manner that
the combination of water and energy technologies will cause a significant
improvement of the local supply and disposal situation. The realization under
economic and ecological criteria will be focused.
These results will be
transferred into an interactive guide and presented at the Internet platform.
Hence, the information and suggested solutions presented will be spread among
concerned municipalities. Besides German SMEs will be represented at the Latin
American market by the platform. Instruments to achieve the objectives of the
Project are in detail as follows:
·
Determination
and abstraction of specific municipal water supply and water disposal demands
in consideration of regional and vital development statistics (phase 1).
·
Technical,
economical and ecological characterization of state of the art technologies in
the form of efficiency portfolios (e.g. costs vs. PE) against the background of
typical urban structures and regional industrial settlements (phase 1).
·
Modification of
available technologies according to the regional needs and demands,
identification of tangible development potentials and exemplary transfer in
Brazil and Chile by means of specific case studies (phase 2).
·
Establishment
of the Internet based portal for the orientation of municipalities in Latin
America and for the representation of German suppliers: online-design of
municipal "water problems", presentation of exemplary results and
determination of cost models (phase 2).
The
engineering tool of www.aqua-latina.info is a graphically based PDE (Program
Development Environment) of the fifth generation. Graphic decision trees direct
the user through the design routines. A progress indication imparts the status
within the system design at each time. Based on sensitive decision flow charts
facts can be checked, data seized as well as assistance, texts and results
assessed. The result is generated on the basis of the user input while being
passed through the decision flow charts and can be checked limited to the
present intermediary result as well as in an overall version. The platform will
be published in the Internet in different languages.
Figure 1. Overall
structure and projected modules of the engineering tool
III. OUTLOOK
According to estimations of
the German Office for Foreign Trade (bfai) [2] the total market volume for
water technology products in Việt Nam had been around 0.3 Million US$ in
the year 2000. Industry experts believe the market volume to increase
substantially in the next five years.
Future steps of the
development might comprise besides the implementation of further technological
fields related to the integrated water management the enlargement of the
platform for more countries e.g. from Asia with similar challenges.
Acknowledgements
The first phase of this
project has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research and
Development under the Reference Number 02WD0397.
REFERENCES
1.
German Federal
Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), 2006, Sektorkonzept
Wasser, BMZ Konzept 143, publication,
Berlin.
2. German
Office for Foreign Trade (bfai), 2003, Marktanalysen Wasser-management
und Wassertechnik Asien/Pazifik, publication,
Köln.
3. United
Nations Children’s Fund, 2006,
Progress for children – a report card on water and sanitation, publication, New York.
4. United Nations Environment Program, 2006, GEO
2000, Internet homepage URL:
http://www.unep.org/geo2000/.