Pergamon PH: S0273-1223(98)00382-5 Wal. Sci. Vol. 37, No. 12. pp. 397-401.1998. IAWQ @ 1998Publishedby ElsevierScienceLtd. Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0273-1223/98$19'00 + 0'00 REVIEWING, ASSESSING AND SPECULATING G. Olsson* and R. Newell** • Department of Industrial Electrical Engineering and Automation (lEA), Lund University, Box 118, S-22100 Lund. Sweden •• Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072. Australia ABSTRACT A concise assessment is made of the scientific and technical programme of the 7th IAWQ Workshop on Instrumentation, Control and Automation of Water and Wastewater Treatment and Transport Systems. Although progress has been made in certain areas, others are identified as crucial targets for further research and development. © 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved KEYWORDS Research goals; instrumentation; data analysis; control; automation; modelling. INTRODUCTION The 7th IAWQ Workshop on Instrumentation, Control and Automation of Water and Wastewater Treatment and Transport Systems was held in Brighton, UK, in July 1997. The authors were asked to review the workshop as a closure of the scientific program. Thus, the planning was made "on-line" during the conference. This paper is an edited version of the presentation given in Brighton. It is obvious that the review is influenced by our personal backgrounds: process control and chemical process design and control. An attempt is made to view the progress in ICA in wastewater treatment with other applications of process control kept in mind. THE REVIEWSTRUCTURE The review can be structured in different ways. We have chosen to first review by content: instrumentation, data analysis, process control, optimisation, and modelling/simulation. Instrumentation gives the perception of the plant in operation. The information from the sensors and instruments has to be interpreted by means of data analysis and diagnosis. Based on this some decision can be made. This is the process control phase. Before any control can he realised, however, the goals have to be stated clearly: the optimisation phase. Modelling and simulation can be considered the confirmation of all the operational phases. The review can also be presented by problem areas: water, wastewater, transport systems, and management. The overall impression of the workshop is that there are lots of efforts on wastewater instrumentation and control. In the other areas we saw much too little research and development presented. In particular, if plant- 397