The researchers’ findings at IIT Mandi have been recognised and published in the Journal of Cleaner Production. Drs. Atul Dhar and Sarvasheel Powar have contributed to the publication. They are both Associate Professors at IIT Mandi’s School of Engineering. The researchers’ influence was from EF Schumacher’s concept of “Appropriate Technology.” According to this notion, every choice should be congruent with a society’s socio-cultural, political and economic structures. Satvasheel Powar said, “While the choice of water treatment methods for a particular society was based on human intuition in the past, such an approach is no longer valid given the magnitude of the activity, the range of techniques available, the complexity of socio-economic fabric of today’s society, and several conflicting criteria that must be considered.” In addition, Satvasheel Powar noted, “We employed a set of approaches known as Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM), which mixes alternative decisions with quantitative and qualitative outcomes to produce compact answers.” To deal with the uncertainty and “intricacies” of the decision-making process, the team has used MSDM methods with AI features of fuzzy logic. The study was done to find the most environment-conscious way to dispose of wastewater. additionally, it can be used to solve any multi-criteria selection problem. This could be as simple as choosing a consumer product or as big as making decisions about investments and social/cultural policies. Since it takes into account the feelings of those affected by policy decisions, this combination of approaches is also helpful from a policy perspective.
