Glades County is a region on the Gulf Coast with a population of 600,000. About 90 percent of the population is located in and near the city of Sitkus. The main attractions of the area are its clean, sandy beaches and nearby fishing. Resorts, restaurants, hotels, retailers, and the Sitkus/Glades County economy in general rely on these attractions for tourist dollars.
In the past decade, Glades County has expe- rienced a near doubling of population and indus- try. One result has been the noticeable increase in the level of water pollution along the coast due primarily to the increased raw sewage dumped by Glades County into the Gulf. Ordinarily, the Glades County sewer system directs effluent waste through filtration plants before pumping it into the Gulf. Although the Glades County Sani- tary District (GCSD) usually is able to handle the county’s sewage, during heavy rains the runoff from paved surfaces exceeds sewer capacity and must be diverted past filtration plants and directly into the Gulf. Following heavy rains, the beaches are cluttered with dead fish and debris. The Gulf fishing trade is also affected, since pollution drives away desirable fish. Recently, the water pollution level has become high enough to damage both the tourist and fishing trades. Besides coastal pollu- tion, there is concern that as the population contin- ues to increase, the county’s primary fresh water source, Glades River, will also become polluted.
The GCSD has been mandated to prepare a comprehensive water waste management program that will reverse the trend in pollution along the Gulf Coast as well as handle the expected increase in effluent wastes over the next 20 years. Although not yet specified, it is known that the program will include new sewers, filtration plants, and stricter anti-pollution laws. As a first step, GCSD must establish the overall direction and mission of the program.
Answer the following questions (given the limited information, it is okay to advance some logical guesses; if you are not able to answer a question for lack of information, indicate how and where, as a systems engineer, you would get it):
1. What is the system? What are its key elements and subsystems? What are the boundaries and how are they determined? What is the envi- ronment?
2. Who are the decision-makers?
3. What is the problem? Carefully formulate it.
4. Define the overall objective of the water waste management program. Because the program is wide-ranging in scope, you should break this down into several sub-objectives.
5. Define the criteria or measures of performance to be used to determine whether the objectives of the program are being met. Specify sev- eral criteria for each sub-objective. As much as possible, the criteria should be quantitative, although some qualitative measures should also be included. How will you know if the criteria that you define are the appropriate ones to use?
6. What are the resources and constraints?
7. Elaborate on the kinds of alternatives and range of solutions to solving the problem.
8. Discuss some techniques that could be used to help evaluate which alternatives are best.