Is my spill environmentally safe? Towards an Integrated Management of Wastewater in a river basin using agents that can argue

Wastewater management in river basins is becoming increasingly complex. While there is an urge to reduce the ecological imbalances in fluvial ecosystems, more wastewater has to be treated because of both demographic and industrial growth. Furthermore, given the intrinsic multidimensionality of river basins, its management must take into account all the agents that affect and are affected by the wastewater. In this paper we propose the application of an artificial intelligence based model -ProCLAIM- for an integrated wastewater management in river basins. The model provides a framework for an effective and monitored deliberation over the appropriateness of proposed actions in safety critical domains. We illustrate the model's use in a specific situation where a given industry intends to discharge a considerable amount of wastewater due to an emergency. The agents potentially affected by the industry's intended discharge will be able to defend their interest by submitting arguments for and against the proposed action. These arguments are then evaluated in order to determine the appropriateness of the action. That is, whether the industry's discharge is environmentally safe given the agent's proposed courses of actions.