Multicriteria approach in the selection of wastewater treatment alternatives: a systematic literature review

Abstract

The structured bibliographic study has become an excellent tool to evaluate scientific trends in different fields of knowledge. In this sense, this work aims to analyse the research opportunities, by presenting an overview about decision making in sanitation projects in the international scenario. ProKnow-C (Knowledge Development Process - Constructivist) was the intervention tool applied in this work, which consists of a structured process for generating knowledge over a given topic based on the researcher interests and limitations. At the end of the search process, 16 articles with scientific recognition and content aligned with the research were identified. The first survey results have showed a increase growth trend around the theme in the last 7 years. The in-depth analysis have showed that the construction of the international models follows standard methodologies  which can be replicated in different scenarios, by considering different aspects and decision makers preferences. Studies applying decision support methods in the sanitary area, especially for the selection of wastewater treatment technologies have been shown to have a high impact, and consequently a high relevance.