University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Water Resources Center
Abstract
A mathematical method presented here deals with regionalization of wastewater systems, a complex public sector planning problem. The method proposed focuses on generating alternative physical plans efficiently and systematically so that planning issues other than economic efficiency may be meaningfully integrated into the process of comparing alternative plans. Such a method, although simple in concept, can aid analysts in developing insights. Two types of alternative plans can be generated by the method, single-time period plans and simplified multiperiod plans. In generating alternative plans, the method takes advantage of the structure of a branch-and-bound algorithm. A branch-and-bound tree may be transformed into a matrix called the imputed value incidence matrix which displays the incidence relationship between each of the alternative plans and the state of variables (regional facilities) associated with it. Once the matrix is constructed the imputed value of a given variable or a given set of variables can be obtained from the matrix. An application of the method to a realistic example problem is presented and the interpretation of imputed values is discussed.U.S. Department of the InteriorU.S. Geological SurveyOpe
