Towards an ontology of waste water treatment plants: the identification phase

Water pollution in Mexico is an important issue in spite of the benefits obtained by current waste water treatment plants; more heuristic knowledge is required to adequately design and operate new plants. This paper discusses the role of the identification phase in the attainment of a knowledge base to obtain a domain ontology of waste water treatment plants. Two examples of waste water plants are discussed: an activated sludge facility and a stabilization lagoon, the knowledge bases developed by the authors are discussed to support the thesis that a most difficult part of the task is the gathering and ordering of the necessary data and therefore one must take care in interviewing skilled operators and maintain good logs of the operation. The results obtained so far can be qualified as successful, they have helped novice operators to reduce their learning curve.