Course Title

/

Decision Support Systems

The project in brief / The Palestinian Water Authority is implementing Certifying Wastewater and Reuse Technicians through the generous fund of the Spanish government through AECID, this projet has many activities to be applied during a period of 24 months,
Wastewater treatment systems protect public health and the environment only if they are being properly operated and maintained. The Wastewater Operator Certification Program is intended to protect public health, environmental quality, and the financial investment of wastewater facilities. In the wastewater industry every employer has a general obligation to perform due diligence in ensuring the competency of the personnel providing services at public facilities Wastewater certification provides employers with evidence that the certificate holder has demonstrated a certain level of job-related knowledge, skills and abilities. It provides a documented level of assurance that employees are competent in safe work practices.
Thus a course on ‘Decision Support Systems (DSS)‘willbeconducted by PWA by a local consultant to help the trainees in the Palestinian water sector todeveloptheircompetences.
Decision makers are faced with increasingly stressful environments – highly competitive, fast-paced, near real-time, overloaded with information, data distributed throughout the enterprise, and multinational in scope. The combination of the Internet enabling speed and access, and the maturation of artificial intelligence techniques, has led to sophisticated aids to support decision making under these risky and uncertain conditions. These aids have the potential to improve decision making by suggesting solutions that are better than those made by the human alone.They are increasinglyavailable in diverse fields,DSS offer potential to assist in solving both semi-structured and unstructured problems
This training course / As the Training and Development Directorate(TDGD) is mandated (under water law no.3/2002) to provide trainings and capacity building for all service providers in the Palestinian water sector,TDGD is organizing a DSS training .DSS:is an interactive computer-based system or subsystemintended to help decisionmakers use communications technologies, data, documents, knowledge and/or models to identify and solveproblems, completedecisionprocesstasks, and makedecisions.
Thus the TDGD Of PWA is intending to carry a DSS training course which aims at enhancing the abilities and capabilities of Its employees in addition to employees in the water sector to gain the following:
  • To become familiar with the goals and different forms of decision support,
  • Gain knowledge of the practical issues of implementation.
  • Examines systems based on statistical and logical approaches to decision making that include statistical prediction, rule-based systems, case-based reasoning, neural networks, fuzzy logic etc.
  • Give an overview of the various computerized decision support techniques together with a detailed assessment of successful and unsuccessful applications developed.
  • Examine potential impact of the technology together with the challenges associated with this kind of application.

Scope of this training course / The main tasks to be conducted by the trainer are:
  1. 5 days training working week training (6hrs/day, 3 days/week, in addition to 2 separate days of: 1day/6hrs to discuss related case studies, 1 days(6hrs/day) to assess improvement of day to day activities of the participants(retreat) in applying the skills they comprehended in the course.
  2. Preparing and printing attendance forms, material handout(including but not limited to water sector related case studies, training evaluation forms and templates(examples on different models)), training program (agenda to meet the training objectives) and presentations, relevant logos are to put on cover sheet, after (PWA-TDGD) approval of the draft handouts.
  3. Preparing, organizing implementing a one week training course (30hours) (5 training days*6hrs/day), including all logistical preparation required.
  4. Preparing course evaluation and certification (the evaluation will be conducted by the (TDGD-PWA)as an exercise of what has been learnt in the course.
  5. Reporting on the result and impacts of the proposed training.

Selection of qualified trainers / At least 3 qualified and experienced trainers should be quoted in order to select the appropriate trainer, CVs (company profiles should be submitted to the contact person(s) in TDGD-PWA.
Training Outputs / It is expected that the trainees at the completion of this training, should attain the working knowledge to accomplish the following:
Understand the role of information systems in organizations.
 Identify and define the major types of DSS.
 Utilize the correct DSS in the right context
Training Objective / After completing the DSStraining process, trainee candidates will be able to:
Understand DSS configurations.
Learn characteristics and capabilities of DSS.
Understand DSS components.
Describe structure of DSS components.
Understand how DSS and the Web interact.
Learn the role of the user in DSS.
Understand DSS hardware and integration.
Learn DSS configurations.
Duration / 5days (30 hours)
Participants / 12 persons (Palestinian Water Authority, West Bank Water Department and from municipal waste water services)
Target Group /
  • Decision making departments at PWA, water service providers.

60% / 20% / 0% / 20%
Prerequisite / Applicants of the course should:
  1. Be nominated by a PA institution in accordance to the procedures stipulated below.
  2. Be on the staff in charge of water wastewater departments.
  3. Have at least 8years experience in fields related to the management.
  4. Be in good health, both physically and mentally, in order to complete the course.
  5. Excellent interpersonal skills.
  6. Not be serving in the military or security forces.

Materials and handouts /
  1. The course Handouts should be prepared by the trainer(s),number of copies to be handed in are as follows:
  2. Two softcopies (word format) and two solid copies to be handed in to the follow-up and coordination department, TDGD/PWA.
  3. One solid copy and soft copy to be handed in to each participants.
The training materials should be in English language ;
Language / Arabic/English
Certificate / Certificates of participation in the training course will be issued by PWA only to participants who attended 80% of the course.
These certificates will be authorized by PWA and AECID.
Evaluation of the course / Final Evaluation of the course will be conducted by the follow-up and coordination department-TDGD/PWA in order to examine the level of achievement.
Trainer / local Consultant
Person in charge / PWA-Palestine
1.Mr.Ziyad Fuqaha,Director General of training and development-PWA, E-mail:,Tel: 022987665
2.Mrs.Rania karakra, Director of Follow-up and coordination, E-mail:,Tel: 022987665
3.Eng.Beesan Shonnar, Director of Policies and Technical Support, E-mail:,Tel: 022987665
Dates of realisation / 12 – 16 October ,2014
Place /
  • Palestine

TDGD-B.Sh