With the release of the EC water framework directive, water quality management will become a transnational issue on a catchment scale, requiring exchange of water quality data between governing boards and water authorities of the different member states. One issue for water quality management is to have sufficient and comparable information about the water quality and the impacting factors and effectiveness of measures taken.
Based on novel technologies, a modular monitoring station suitable for continuous application in sewers, waste-water treatment plants and surface water bodies has been designed. The monitoring stations serve as the backbone of a water quality pilot network, that is currently tested at different locations in Austria. The network also includes a central data base server, where the collected data is processed consistently and stored in a standard format. The water quality network design shows new perspectives with respect to continuous and consistent water data collection and processing, which is a prerequisite for decision making in water quality management.
Our part in this project is to run monitoring stations at combined sewer overflows (CSO) where we want to measure frequency and duration of spill flow events and to quantify the overflowing pollutional loads into the watercourse.