As water companies look to secure water production and cut costs, some of their processes are still at a very early stage of development. As an example, the management of changes in raw water quality at the plant intake is still based on empirical knowledge and is triggered by few local data (principally monitored at the plant intake). WQeMS provides frequent, wide-area-covering across the water body and accurate estimates for selected water quality variables. Main innovative elements comprise of the a) use of multi-sensor-fusion technologies, b) spatial and temporal resolution, and product consistency, c) treatment of small (also uneven shaped) open surface water reservoirs, d) minimization and documentation of uncertainty, e) compliance with ontology and semantics of water quality supporting regulations, f) metadata tool documentation, g) interoperability with existing Decision Support Systems and multiple DIAS, h) cloud based micro-services structure, i) federated approach, enabling further service providers to expand WQeMS service portfolio.
Service components directly relate with climate risks, e.g. floods, droughts, leading to raw water availability and quality changes; and population exposure risk, e.g. health security, caused by fluctuation of the drinking water quality or living environment degradation. WQeMS supports drinking water managing authorities and key production actors in the sector to comply, among others, with the EU Water Framework and Drinking Water Directives. The project envisages to further support EU policy implementation across existing DSSs, and actions to develop adapted Water Safety Plans (e.g. for the identification of risks). It facilitates the information flow to the water authorities (end users), thanks to inclusion of co-design and co-creation procedures. By communicating exactly what is required and, in the way it is required makes possible to timely inform about an emergency across different devices or receptors. This enhances additionally social acceptance of and trust to common practices in water monitoring at the local, national, and EU levels.
