Presenting a Cooperative Behavior Framework for Increasing the Resilience of Water and Wastewater Treatment Plants in Coastal Floods

Wastewater Treatment Plants that constructed in the coastal regions need more attention since the flood occurrence may cause excessive loads on the infrastructures. These excessive loads may result in the system’s failure and innumerable damages on the infrastructure. In this study, in order to reduce WWTPs’ vulnerability in time of flood, an index called Resiliency was developed to quantify system’s characteristics. Later, two main approaches were considered to enhance the infrastructure performance; the “Resource allocation” and the “Cooperative behavior” method. The former method was applied employing those factors which were improvable with the investment of funds and financial allocations. They were utilized to make the system more robust. In addition, for this part, implementing some new agents with potential impacts on funding were described in order to have a more realistic vision. As for the latter method, the cooperative behavior approach, the cooperation was utilized to demonstrate joint operation among WWTPs and the way they interact. For this purpose, WWTPs’ placement was analyzed to check if they could operate jointly. Thereafter, effectiveness of these two approaches was compared in order to make the best decision regarding different cases. The results showed that in three collaborations among; Bowery Bay, Tallman Island, Newtown Creek, and Red Hook WWTPs, cooperation has had a significant effect on the resiliency index.