Abstract
Water is an important aspect of every citizen worldwide; no living organism can live without it. It is a crucial development factor since it conditions humans' economic, health and social growth and their communities. The United Nations (UN) acknowledged the human right to water in 2010. It strives to ensure clean water for all through its Sustainable Development Goal 6, “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. However, access to sufficient potable water remains an element of significant follow-up, especially in developing countries. Water treatment plants (WTP) are vital in supplying potable water to communities. Nevertheless, existing water treatment plants face numerous challenges that hinder them from providing humans with quality and sufficient potable water daily, especially in developing countries. This situation occurs because the current designers and developers of potable water treatment plants do not consider all stakeholders' needs. It means all stakeholders’ expectations wouldn’t be met, leading to a misunderstanding of how the WTP works. Our research primarily focuses on modelling a SCADA system for WTPs that addresses this stakeholder misunderstanding. SCADA systems were created to optimize and increase productivity in the manufacturing and production sectors. They have a wide range of applications across multiple industries. To date, SCADA systems help ensure continued productivity in water treatment plants. This research utilises systems engineering concepts to model a SCADA system for potable water treatment plants that creates a common understanding among all stakeholders on how the system works. We used Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) to model a SCADA system for potable water treatment plants. MBSE is a systems engineering methodology that involves the formal application of modelling techniques to create system models. It has three pillars, a modelling method, language and tool. In this study, the chosen modelling method is the INCOSE Object-Oriented Systems Engineering Method (OOSEM). The modelling language is Systems Modeling Language (SysML), and the modelling tool is Sparax Enterprise Architect. The results show that the proposed model in this study is easy to comprehend and creates a shared understanding of how the SCADA and WTP systems work. It should be noted that the proposed model represents views of these systems, not the systems themselves. Therefore, we believe that our model will permit each stakeholder to design and develop each part of both systems using their specific and specialized tools.
Keywords: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisitionv (SCADA) system, Water Treatment Plant (WTP), Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), Systems Modeling Language (SysML), model.