Towards the automation of water quality monitoring networks

The implementations of water quality monitoring networks have a number of inherent engineering challenges and the automation of the data collection and analysis only adds to that complexity. This paper has been written to discuss the challenges and solutions that have been developed within the framework of an industrial/academic partnership. Water quality monitoring stations are important tools in the area of environmental water science; however, traditional monitoring station installations and their maintenance tend to require more effort than desirable. Common sensors are not easily integrated into fieldbus systems and the lack of storable meta data (status, calibration information, location,...) available from sensor devices in this field, requires additional effort on the part of the owner if a fully utilizable database of meaningful values is to be constructed. An approach is proposed to automate this effort by providing an electronic catalog of predefined devices that can be input by the user during setup or read from the sensor in real-time. Automated data evaluation, alarm triggering and real-time data `correction' are all being developed with an aim to create fully documented long-term databases of usable and meaningful water quality data. And finally, to initiate improvements in the area of monitoring automation, some thoughts on the future of advanced fieldbus systems are presented.