Development of a Municipal Water Quality Control System: Application of Fourth Generation Prototyping Tools

Abstract

Due to recent growing concern about water quality, testing requirements associated with the wastewater treatment process have increased significantly in a short period of time. This paper decribes the systems development process used to automate the municipal test laboratories used to schedule, track, store, retrieve, and report information about the quality of water collected from wastewater treatment plants for the City of Atlanta. The system was analyzed, designed, and implemented using a variety of manual and automated systems development tools. These included structure charts, data flow diagrams E-R diagrams, a custom-built data base design tool, and the relational Ingres DBMS and accompanying tool used to generate menus, screens, reports, and applications. In addition end-users participated in the system design, through prototyping. Benefits to the environment include faster, more detailed, and more accumte reporting of water quality information which is intended to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of water treatment plant management and thus increase overall water quality.