"We have been trialling Ortelium since 2016 as a citizen monitoring application at the Cronulla Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), one of the four major treatment plants serving the greater metropolitan area of Sydney.
The implementation of Ortelium at Cronulla WWTP is a part of a PhD thesis at UNSW. The project included a training of the community and Sydney Water plant operators in terms of odour descriptors to become regular users of the platform.
Through Ortelium, citizens can now report any odour sensory impacts they may experience about Cronulla WWTP. Additionally, the system is used by site operators to formalise their own olfactory detection of the WWTP to determine the status of unit processes and sources of fugitive emissions.
We observed that Ortelium provides communication structures that are instantaneous, standardised, and offer transparency that can in itself alleviate complaints. What’s more, the use of Ortelium as a communication platform between WWTPs could summarily reduce the costs of community engagement as well as establish best practice."
- James Hayes, Ph.D. student at UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
