Dynamic Costing of Water Pollution Control Measures in an ISO 14001 Framework

A multi-disciplinary group of water resources professionals at CDM have been developing a universally applicable River Basin Management System that, among other things, integrates two sometimes segregated applications: environmental management systems and cost-effectiveness analysis. With the System, cost estimates can be made for four distinct costing categories (engineering/construction, operation/maintenance, administrative, opportunity) over a multi-decade plan-do-check-act time stream, and each estimate can be revised in response to the information changes that will inevitably occur through time in the application area (e.g., procurement of funding for measures, measures' implementation levels and observed performance, etc.). The System's capacity for dynamic costing is attributable to the fact that the sets of measures under analysis, along with their associated pollutant removal effectiveness and costs estimates, are distinct entries in a web-interfaced decision support system modeled on the principles of the internationally recognized Environmental Management System ISO 14001.