Computer Assisted Identification of Filamentous Bacteria in Activated Sludge Systems

Abstract

This thesis describes a PC based expert system program to assist in the identification of different filamentous bacteria that occur in activated sludge wastewater treatment plants. The objective of the thesis was to develop an expert system software, for the personal computer, which can be used to assist in typing of different filamentous bacteria and as a training tool for wastewater treatment plant personnel. An expert system is an intelligent computer program that uses knowledge and inference procedures to solve problems (Gudavallit 1987). It has previously been successfully used in the identification application (Barr et al., 1989). What the expert system does is to try to mimic the human brain electronically. In the expert system there is a knowledge base. The computing technique provides a searching scheme called an inference engine. First the user of the computer provides information about a certain problem. Then the expert system searches the knowledge base by using the inference engine to give a result.