Mr. Meghraj Garad will present his APS as per the detail below:
Date: 24th Feb 2023
Time: 1730 - 1900 hrs.
Venue: Conference Room No.1
Topic: Development of Rapid Water Quality Assessment Tool for River Basin
Guide: Prof. Bakul Rao
RPC members: Prof. Parmeshwar Udmale, Prof. Pradip Kalbar, and Prof. Hemendra Arya
Abstract:
The rivers are continuously polluted through the point sources, like sewage from villages, towns, and industrial waste, along with non-point sources, like agriculture residue through runoff. Most of the drinking water sources for towns and cities are dams and wells or borewells for villages that are recharged through rivers and have adverse impacts due to river pollution necessitating the water quality monitoring of rivers. India has been trying to address this issue through various programs and established 4484 water quality monitoring points till 2022; nearly half of them are on rivers. The challenges faced in expanding the monitoring network are time and resource constraints involved in sample collection and testing. Often, the bias involved in sampling due to the inaccessibility of points affects the quality representation of the river. Testing samples against quality parameters is also costly and requires lab infrastructure and expertise, limiting the points, frequency, and parameters for testing. The current study aims to develop a rapid water quality monitoring tool which includes three parts; the first is designing specifications for a sampling mechanism that can accelerate sampling and cover inaccessible points. The second part of the study involves optimizing the monitoring points for sampling along the river length. The third part aims to develop a decision framework to choose the parameters for testing and methods based on the basin characteristics for each point. The report gives a brief literature review on the existing monitoring practices and policies, gaps and challenges in terms of adequacy of the number of points, and quality parameters.
Keywords: Rapid Water Quality Monitoring, Surface Water Bodies, Water Quality Monitoring, River Basin