Water Quality Monitoring System Design

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has been highlighting the need to address water-energy-food (WEF) challenges in the contexts of communities and watersheds to ensure that ecosystems comprising land and water systems are managed for their full range of benefits, ensuring these critical components of human security.

A key component of managing WEF security is understanding the component systems, how they are functioning and how they respond to development, climate and other pressures. To effectively manage WEF security for a community or region, one needs to monitor and understand each of the three systems. Understanding each system accurately in turn relies on monitoring and reporting of system parameters. To provide guidance on effective and high-quality monitoring, this report focuses on the details of water monitoring, including issues such as monitoring system design, site selection, monitoring frequency, reporting, etc. to enhance its ability to inform water and watershed management.

Hydrologic Information systems (HISs) are systems for measuring, processing, storing and disseminating interlinked aspects of watershed data including the quantity and quality of climate, surface water, and groundwater. This report explains the key components of an HIS in the context of mining development, linking to the need for HIS to better understand and management for overall WEF security. The report provides detailed guidance on water monitoring as a means of measuring and managing the benefits that contribute to regional security. Characterization of water systems requires monitoring of the flow, storage and use of water, and comprehensive watershed monitoring inevitably incorporates socioeconomic parameters along with the more typical biophysical ones. This research highlights the crucial role of HISs in the wise management of water resources.