نشریه آب و توسعه پایدار
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 4، بهار و تابستان 1394)

With regard to the importance of technological developments, senior enterprise managers should be aware of their organization's technological capabilities, changes and developments in the world, and also have information from their rival's efforts in achieving new technologies, to be in line of their organization's technology developments. Therefore a technological needs assessment model, is developed as an indicator to determine the technological capabilities required for the implementation of technology plans in developing countries. This paper analyses the technological capabilities level of the Markazi province's rural water and waste-water company and highlights its weaknesses using the aforementioned model. This model assess nine different aspects of the company's capabilities, and determines its performance in each category. Results show that in attracting, employment and acquisition of technology the company scores the lowest compared with other aspects. Also, the strategic Technology unit in the company, the quality control unit, the maintenance unit, and monitoring unit have been identified as strategic technology units in the company. Based on this, the technology need for these units is much more critical. From the proposed AHP models the needs assessment model has been chosen as the most suitable strategic technology model for the company. From the perspective of this model, the technology needs have been divided into six categories and the model assess the attractiveness and technology capabilities in each of these categories. Based on the ratings, in terms of attractiveness and capability, the three technologies of: Trap meters, Scada and Disinfection systems and new energies, have the highest importance in the Markazi province of ABFAR co, respectively.

Assessing financial performance is one of the most important in functional domains, because financial information is considered for the basis of making decisions. organizations use various indexes for assessing performance in quantitative techniques. although these sorts of assessments provide useful information, but the comprehensive concept will never be concluded because of considering all the indexes without regarding their importance. So identifying the representative of indexes, using scientific models will be so effective for the results. In this study according to the financial indexes of water and waste water companies (60 indexes) using grey relational analysis theory, the representative of indexes (25 indexes) are selected for assessing performance. Then the performance of the water and waste water companies will be ranked in two conditions: without representative of index and with representative of index on the basis of Topsis. The results will show weak correlation between the above said conditions (0.217). The grey relational analysis model can be used as an effective tool for selecting indexes to improve performance assessment.

The water and waste-water industry, as an infrastructure industry, has wide interactions with the public by having more than 20 million subscribers (27 million units). One of these interactions is the collection of debt considering the nature of the obligation sales and service rendered. Collection of debt and the costs imposed as a result of the qualitative and quantitative services offered to the subscribers, is a serious challenge for the water and waste-water industry. Bank fees collection (bank charges), is one of these incurred costs. Statistics show that bank payments over six periods in the year 1393 of approximately 209 billion Rials (122 billion urban, and 87 billion rural) have been incurred to the industry's costs. This is one aspect of the issue, the other aspect is the waste of national assets and resources through bank payment of bills. This study offers solutions and advice from water and waste-water companie's experts in order to propose a comprehensive analysis of bank payments of bills and clarify aspects of the aforementioned challenges. For a closer look, three questions and hypotheses are discussed and the data is analyzed using descriptive statistics and ANOVA techniques. The results show that with a confidence level of 93% (at least), the development of bank payments of bills is under the influence of the province's developments. In general, paving the way for non-bank payment of bills is one of the factors that has led to the subscriber's satisfaction and works very much for on-time payments and will provide a timely liquidity.

Integrated assessment of water resources systems, as one of the IWRM basic steps, is the most important stage in the process of planning and implementing water resources management. Water accounting frameworks have been introduced for organizing water data and combining them with economic data to come up with effective strategies towards greater productivity with maintaining or improving environmental and social impacts in water resources management. The scale defined in this study was a catchment area in the case of Mashhad plain. According to the framework proposed by the United Nations for water accounting, after compiling water accounts, the state of water resources in the subject area were analyzed using indicators. Results indicate that less water was allocated to the agricultural sector, as the largest water consumer, in 1385 compared to that of 1380. Instead, comparing those two years, more water was allocated to the industrial sector, which produced more revenue and consumed less water. However, the income generated has increased to 1246 IRR per cubic meter of water in 1385 compared to that of 1380. Also, results indicated that without the removal of agriculture, only with more comprehensive alternatives into the management of supply and demand in this sector, the state of the aquifer as well as the local GDP can be improved.

Existence of acid humic in water resources is undesirable and causes carcinogenic component in disinfection process due to reaction with chlorine. Due to their cost-effectiveness and higher physical resistance than activated carbon, natural zeloites are used for removing various pollutants. . In the present study, Iranian natural zeolite modified with cetylpyridinium bromide (CPB) was investigated for removing humic acid (HA) in an aqueous solution. In addition, common isotherms and kinetics in water and wastewater are studied. The effects of parameters such as initial humic acid viscosity, adsorbed dose. pH, and contact time with modified zeolite on humic acid adsorption were investigated. Findings indicated that increased contact time and adosorbed dose increases the efficiency of humic acid removal and increased pH decreases the removal efficiency of modified zeolite. The initial pH of the HA solution strongly affected the efficiency of SMZ for HA removal in an aqueous solution. The optimum initial pH values were in acidic levels for adsorption of the HA on SMZ. Furthermore, Langmuir isotherm and second-order kinetics were found to be the best models for explaining humic acid adsorption reactions on modified zeolite adsorbent.. This study showed that Iranian natural zeolite modified with cetylpyridinium bromide (CPB) as a cationic surfactant is a promising adsorbent for removal of humic acid.

Synthetic sulphonated anthraquinones are the raw materials used for producing a large palette of synthetic dyes, and microorganisms have a limited ability to decompose them, hence they are one of the important environmental pollutants. In order to study the ability of plants to remove this pollutant from the environment, corn, as a plant not containing any natural anthraquinones and common sorrel, as a plant containing natural anthraquinones, were studied in hydroponic conditions. A factorial experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design. The first factor was the plant species (Corn, as plant without natural anthraquinones, and common sorrel, plants with natural anthraquinones) and the second factor was sulphonated anthraquinones pollutant concentration. To reduce number of data, they were first analyzed using principle component analysis (PCA) procedure. Parameters with the highest specific value and highest effect on total variance as well as characteristics with the highest coefficients were selected.Result of PCA showed that shoot characteristics were less affected by pollutant concentration than root, and antioxidative defense system, lipid peroxidation and production of hydrogen peroxide in root, shoot and root dry weight had the highest contribution in total variance. Data analysis of variance indicated that corn ability was less than common sorrel for removing sulphonated anthraquinones. Root and shoot dry weighs were reduced by sulphonated anthraquinones, while activity of some enzymes such as Superoxide Dismutase (SOD), Ascorbate Peroxidase (APX), Catalase (CAT) and malondialdehyde were increased. The highest activity of antioxidative enzymes was measured in common sorrel treated by 3 mM sulphonated anthraquinones.

Nowadays, problems and barriers to supply adequate water and also environmental issues have caused wastewater treatment (WWT) to be considered a high priority. In light of high costs of WWT, using natural capacities to reduce pollution could be potentially significant. In this study, the impact of varying temperature and channel roughness have been investigated on the wastewater quality parameters using the QUAL2K(Q2K) Numerical Model. The results show, as temperature increases, the reduction rate of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) is more than the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and , nitrate concentration increases. This numerical assessment indicates that the purification rate is too great as temperature rises above 30°C. Also the results indicate that by increasing channel roughness, BOD and COD have descending trends and Ammonium and Phosphorus have ascending trends. According to the obtained results, nitrate (NO3) has decreasing trend when the Manning Roughness Coefficient (n) is higher than 0.04 along the channel, but is reduced when “n” is less than 0.04.

Estimation of leakage in a network consists of several attributes, such as unauthorized use, minor leaks and networking events whose natures are different from each other. The most important attributes are large losses due to breakage and major leaks which in addition to wasting fresh water resources, will lead to water pollution and problems for the buildings. In this paper, leakage detection methods which are based on optimization were studied and compared. A Matlab code was presented based on an algorithm with minimized objective function and the relationship between pressure loss and the potential leakage locations. The verification of the method was carried out by assuming the optimization of least squared error between calculated values (Pressure– Leakage Relation) and observed data (the assumption of occurrence leakage in nodes). The offered code could well identify the hypothetical leaking nodes and leakage value distributed between them by minimizing pressure differences. The results of running the model and comparing the observed data with the model using the optimal method of leak detection methods, showed that aside from appropriate method selection and calibration of the model, in order to have more accurate estimation of the location and amount of leakages in the network, field surveys and piezometer readings should be carried out so that the consumption pattern of the studied area and illegal branches were identified.

Nowadays, it’s very usual to use these models in almost all sciences. use of these models has provided quick, appropriate and economic answers to many questions. Modeling is developing In different fields of agriculture, including irrigation and drainage. Field tests are useful to determine and analyze the different irrigation management but there are significant limitations. The most important limitation is the validity of the experiment that is limited by the physical conditions of the area where the experiment performes there. One of the models that is used in agricultural science is the SWAP model that is a model for simulating of soil, water, atmosphere and plant. This model is able to analyze interactions between water movement, growth of plant and transfer of solutions, prediction of yield under different regimes of water and salt, long-term simulation and irrigation scheduling. Although SWAP model is able to simulate relations between soil, water, atmosphere and plant under different management field conditions completely but it has limitations too. One of these limitations is many numbers of input data. So far many researches have been done using this model but by searching on the scientific articles, there is no complete source that offers the basic equations used in the model and also the practical guide is not available. In this article, according to the model guide, the equations that used for model calculations, has been described. Also a useful and practical guide for users who want to use this model has been presented.

This research has been done in order to assessing factor that are affecting on optimizing water consumption method in household sector of the rural areas of Bushehr township. The used method for gathering information in this study is descriptive and analysis. So that first, effective factors on water consumption method has been recognized after that the questionnaire has been provided. 257 consumer has been selected as samples among the 6964 Statistical Society with error coefficient 0.06. The questionnaire includes 43 questions in 7 steps and 2 ranking questions. In second step questionnaires has been analyzed using SPSS software. CRONBAKH coefficient for questionnaire is 0.907, since it is higher than 0.70, it is constant value. Results of the duad comparisan matrix questionnaireshow that, the most important effective factors on water consumption method, in the experts opinion are detaching drinkable and hygienic water, advertising and informing, training and tecnology. According to the consumer's responses, the most important effective factors on optimizing are related to advertising and informing, training, detaching drinkable and hygienic water, tariff reforming and water price.

Application of agent based model in simulation of stakeholder’s behavior is slightly a new method for modeling of complicated systems that include autonomous agents interacting with each other. Recent numerical achievements have made the applications of agent based models possible in various fields. These applications range from modeling of human progress and destruction of past civilizations to modeling of complexities in water resources/consumption systems. In this article foundation of agent based modeling is defined, related tools in this field is introduced and their application in water resources management is clarified. The use of such models provides social interactions simulation. Integration of such simulation models with water resources simulation models helps to make and improve the reliability of decision support systems in water resources management.

Development of water resources projects are recognized as a basis of the development planning in the water resources sector. In addition to the quality of output results, following the schedule , continuous documentation and evaluation during the project is the one of the major challenges. In order to improve water study framework with high quality and scheduling and reduce the study process, the evaluation system of investigation studies is produced by Pazhuhabe shargh consulting engineering compony in 2013 for Khorasan Razavi Regional Water Authority order. This web-based has an integrated database in order to providing management reports. The system uses the SQL model potentials in data base sector and the Net model potentials in web supported sector. Using this system can be effective for accelerating access to results and studies, documentation and eventually increasing technical ability and reduce time to review research projects. According to trial launch system in khorasan Razavi Regional Authority server and assessing work processes during the trial operation, the system is ready to launch at a national level. It is expected to see and increase in access levels, automatic continuous evaluation and approval processes studies and related archive processes decline with launch and use this system.