A smart city-smart bay project - establishing an integrated water monitoring system for decision support in Dublin Bay

Abstract

Environmental and water quality monitoring is key to measuring and understanding the chemical and biological quality of water and for taking reactive remedial action. Over the coming years, monitoring of water bodies will increase within Europe, in order to comply with the requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD, Council Directive 2000/60/EC), and globally owing to pressure from climate change. The establishment of high quality long-term monitoring programmes is regarded as essential if the implementation of the WFD is to be effective. However, the traditional spot/grab sampling using conventional sampling and laboratory based techniques can introduce a significant financial burden, and is unlikely to provide a reasonable estimate of the true maximum and/or mean concentration for a particular physico-chemical variable in a water body with marked temporal variability. When persistent fluctuations occur, it is likely only to be detected through continuous measurements, which have the capability of detecting sporadic peaks of concentration. The aim of this work is to demonstrate the potential for continuous monitoring data in decision support as part of a smart city project. The multi-modal data system shows potential for low-cost sensing in complex aquatic environments around the city. Continuous monitoring data from both visual and water quality sensors is collected and data from grab samples collected support the observations of trends in water quality