An advanced technique for water quality assessment

• Both human activities and natural processes have caused a
continuous degradation of surface water quality in recent decades.

• In order to reverse this negative trend, many countries have adopted
a range of policies, guidelines and tools to manage surface water
quality and provide more effective water resource management.
Member states of the European Union are obliged to achieve at least
a "good environmental status" of coastal waters, rivers and lakes.

• Here, we present an improved water quality index (WQI) model for
assessment of coastal water quality using Cork Harbour, Ireland, as
the case study. The model involves the usual four: (i) WQI
components – selection of water quality indicators for inclusion, (ii)
sub-indexing of indicator values, (iii) sub-index weighting and (iv)
sub-index aggregation – with improvements to make the approach
more objective and data-driven and less susceptible to eclipsing and
ambiguity errors.