Assessment of Water Quality Data

Abstract: The current interest in water quality improvement plans across the country and the wide range of stakeholder involvement have imposed a new paradigm for developing scientifically robust and technically sound software tools for water quality monitoring and assessment. Trend detection is an essential part of water quality assessment, which can help with identifying causal factors for the impairment of water quality, confirming the effectiveness of management actions and establishing a need for management intervention. Discovery of temporal water quality trends is a complex process due to the characteristics of water quality data (non-normal distribution of data, seasonality, flow interactions, missing values, values below the limit of detection, and serial correlation). The preparation of time series data sets and the checking for suitability of available data for trend detection are essential prerequisites for trend assessment. We have designed and developed a user friendly decision support system (DSS) for water quality trend assessment to assist and improve water quality data analysis by various stakeholders including catchment groups and regional bodies. This DSS is a component of a water quality data analysis package developed by eWater CRC. The trend analysis DSS contains steps of data validation, consideration of detection limits, time series data management, statistical testing, modelling and decision-making to help explain the trends. This tool can import time series data from a variety of formats and databases. The tool comes with advance