Water Quality Indices

This book covers water quality indices (WQI) in depth – it describes what purpose they serve, how they are generated, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how to make the best use of them. It is a concise and unique guide to WQIs for chemists, chemical/environmental engineers and government officials.

Whereas it is easy to express the quantity of water, it is very difficult to express its quality because a large number of variables determine the water quality. WQIs seek to resolve the difficulty by translating a set of a large number of variables to a one-digit or a two-digit numeral. They are essential in communicating the status of different water resources in terms of water quality and the impact of various factors on it to policy makers, service personnel, and the lay public. Further they are exceedingly useful in the monitoring and management of water quality.

With the importance of water and water quality increasing exponentially, the importance of this topic is also set to increase enormously because only with the use of indices is it possible to assess, express, communicate, and monitor the overall quality of any water source.

• Provides a concise guide to WQIs: their purpose and generation
• Compares existing methods and WQIs and outlines strengths and weaknesses
• Makes recommendations on how the indices should be used and under what circumstances they apply

Chemists, chemical/environmental engineers and government officials

Dedicated to

Foreword

PART I. Water Quality Indices Based Predominantly on Physico-chemical Characteristics

Chapter 1. Why Water-Quality Indices

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Water-Quality Indices (WQIS)

1.3 Back to Water-Quality Indices (WQIS)

1.4 The First Modern WQI: Horton’s Index

1.5 More on the Benefits of WQI

1.6 WQIs Based on Bioassessment

Chapter 2. Approaches to WQI Formulation

2.1 Introduction

2.2 The Common Steps

2.3 Parameter Selection

2.4 Transformation of the Parameters of Different Units and Dimensions to a Common Scale: Making Subindices

2.5 Assignment of Weightages

2.6 Aggregation of Subindices to Produce a Final Index

2.7 Characteristics of Aggregation Models

Chapter 3. ‘Conventional’ Indices for Determining Fitness of Waters for Different Uses

3.1 General

3.2 Brown’s or the National Sanitation Foundation’s Water-Quality Index (NSF-WQI)

3.3 Nemerow and Sumitomo’s Pollution Index

3.4 Prati’s Implicit Index of Pollution

3.5 Deininger and Landwehr’s PWS Index

3.6 Mcduffie and Haney’s River Pollution Index (RPI)

3.7 Dinius’ Water-Quality Index (1972)

3.8 O’Connor’s Indices

3.9 Walski and Parker’s Index

3.10 Stoner’s Index

3.11 Bhargava’s Index (1983, 1985)

3.12 Dinius’ Second Index

3.13 Viet and Bhargava’s Index (1989)

3.14 The River Ganga Index of Ved Prakash et al.

3.15 Smith’s Index (1990)

3.16 Chesapeake Bay Water-Quality Indices (Haire et al. 1991)

3.17 The Aquatic Toxicity Index

3.18 Li’s Regional Water Resource Quality Assessment Index (1993)

3.19 A Two-Tier WQI

3.20 Use of WQI To Assess Pond Water Quality (Sinha, 1995)

3.21 Use of WQI to Study Hanuman Lake, Jabalpur (Dhamija and Jain 1995)

3.22 Coastal Water-Quality Index for Taiwan (Shyue et al. 1996)

3.23 The Modified Oregon Water-Quality Index (Cude, 2001)

3.24 The ‘Overall Index of Pollution’

3.25 The Canadian Water-Quality Index (CCME, 2001) and the Index of Said et al. (2004)

3.26 A ‘Universal’ Water-Quality Index

3.27 Improved Methods of Aggregation

3.28 A First-Ever WQI For Vietnam

3.29 A Comparison

Chapter 4. Combating Uncertainties in Index-based Assessment of Water Quality

Chapter 5. Indices Based on Relatively Advanced Statistical Analysis of Water-Quality Data

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Harkin’s Index

5.3 Beta Function Index

5.4 An Index with A Multi-pronged (‘Mixed’) Aggregation Function

5.5 WQI For Mediterranean Costal Water of Egypt Based on Principal-Component Analysis

5.6 WQI for Rio Lerma River

5.7 A New WQI Based on A Combination of Multivariate Techniques

5.8 Indices for Liao River Study

5.9 Water-Quality Index Based on Multivariate Factor Analysis (Coletti et al., 2010)

5.10 Study of Anthropogenic Impacts on Kandla Creek, India

Chapter 6. Water-Quality Indices Based on Fuzzy Logic and Other Methods of Artificial Intelligence

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Fuzzy Inference

6.3 A Primer on Fuzzy Arithmetic

6.4 Towards Application of Fuzzy Rules in Developing Water-Quality Indices: The Work of Kung et al. (1992)

6.5 Assessment of Water Quality Using Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation and Other Approaches Towards Development of Fuzzy Water-Quality Indices

6.6 Reach of Fuzzy Indices in Environmental Decision-Making

6.7 A WQI Based on Genetic Algorithm

6.8 The Fuzzy Water-Quality Index of Ocampo-Duque et al. (2006)

6.9 ICAGA’S Fuzzy WQI

6.10 Use of Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) Operators for Aggregation

6.11 Fuzzy Water-Quality Indices for Brazilian Rivers (Lermontov et al., 2008, 2009; Roveda et al., 2010)

6.12 A Hybrid Fuzzy – Probability WQI

6.13 An Entropy-Based Fuzzy WQI

6.14 A Fuzzy River Pollution Decision Support System

6.15 A Fuzzy Industrial WQI

6.16 Impact of Stochastic Observation Error and Uncertainty in Water-Quality Evaluation

Chapter 7. Probabilistic or Stochastic Water-Quality Indices

7.1 Introduction

7.2 A ‘Global’ Stochastic Index of Water Quality

7.3 A Modification in the Global Stochastic Index by Cordoba et al. (2010)

Chapter 8. ‘Planning’ or ‘Decision-Making’ Indices

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Water-Quality Management Indices

8.3 Dee’s WQI-Based Environmental Evaluation System

8.4 Zoeteman’s Pollution Potential Index (PPI)

8.5 Environmental Quality Index Presented by Inhaber (1974)

8.6 Johanson and Johnson’s Pollution Index

8.7 Ott’s NPPI

8.8 Water-Quality Indices for Operational Management

8.9 Index to Regulate Water-Management Systems

8.10 Index to Assess the Impact of Ecoregional, Hydrological and Limnological Factors

8.11 A Watershed-Quality Index

8.12 Index for Watershed Pollution Assessment

8.13 A GIS-Assisted Water-Quality Index for Irrigation Water

8.14 A System of Indices for Watershed Management

8.15 A Fuzzy WQI for Water-Quality Assessment of Shrimp Forms

8.16 An Index to Assess Acceptability of Reclaimed Water for Irrigation

8.17 An Index for Irrigation Water-Quality Management

8.18 Index for the Analysis of Data Generated by Automated Sampling (Continuous Monitoring) Networks

8.19 An Index of Drinking-Water Adequacy for the Asian Countries

8.20 Indices for the Prediction of Stream of Quality in an Agricultural Setting

8.21 An Index to Assess Extent of Wastewater Treatment

8.22 Use of Indices for Prioritising Pacement of Water-Quality Buffers to Control Nonpoint Pollution

Chapter 9. Indices for Assessing Groundwater Quality

9.1 Introduction

9.2 The WQI of Tiwari and Mishra (1985)

9.3 Another Oft-Used Groundwater-Quality Index Development Procedure

9.4 Index of Aquifer Water Quality (Melloul and Collin, 1998)

9.5 Groundwater-Quality Index of Soltan (1999)

9.6 A Groundwater Contamination Index

9.7 An Index for Surface Water as well as Groundwater Quality

9.8 Use of Groundwater-Quality Index, Contamination Index and Contamination Risk Maps for Designing Water-Quality Monitoring Networks

9.9 Attribute Reduction in Groundwater-Quality Indices Based on Rough Set Theory

9.10 Index Development Using Correspondence Factor Analysis

9.11 Indices for Groundwater Vulnerability Assessment

9.12 Groundwater-Quality Index to Study Impact of Landfills

9.13 Indices for Optimising Groundwater-Quality Monitoring Network

9.14 Economic Index of Groundwater Quality Based on the Treatment Cost

9.15 The Information-Entropy-Based Groundwater WQI of Pei-Yue et al. (2010)

9.16 A WQI for Groundwater Based on Fuzzy Logic

9.17 Use of WQI and GIS in Aquifer-Quality Mapping

Chapter 10. Water-Quality Indices of USA and Canada

10.1 Introduction

10.2 WQIS of Canada

10.3 WQIS of the USA

10.4 The WQI of Said et al. (2004)

Chapter 11. WQI-Generating Software and a WQI-based Virtual Instrument

11.1 Introduction

11.2 The Basic Architecture of Qualidex

PART II. Water Quality Indices Based On Bioassessment

Chapter 12. Water-Quality Indices Based on Bioassessment

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Biotic Indices in the Context of the Evolution of Water-Quality Indices

12.3 Stressor-Based and Response-Based Monitoring Approaches

12.4 Biotic Indices − General

Chapter 13. The Biotic Indices

13.1 Introduction

13.2 The Challenge of Finding ‘Control’ Sites

13.3 The Cost Associated with the Use of Biological Assessments of Water

13.4 Organisms Commonly used in Bioassessment

13.5 Biotic Indices for Freshwater and Saline water Systems Based on Macroinvertebrates

13.6 Biotic Indices as Indicators of Water Safety and Human Health Risks

13.7 Comparison of Performances of Different Biotic Indices

13.8 Biotic Indices and Developing Countries

13.9 Limitations of Biotic Indices

13.10 WQIS and BIs: An Overview

Chapter 14. Indices of Biological Integrity or the Multi-metric Indices

14.1 Introduction

14.2 The First IBI (Karr, 1981)

14.3 The Driver–Pressure–Stress–Impact–Response (DPSIR) Paradigm and The IBI

14.4 Illustrative Examples of IBI Development

14.5 Overview of IBIS Based on Different Taxa

14.6 IBIs for Different Aquatic Systems

14.7 Inter-IBI Comparison

14.8 The Present and the Future of IBI

14.9 The Now Well-Recognised Attributes of IBI

14.10 The Shortcomings of IBI

Chapter 15. Multivariate Approaches for Bioassessment of Water Quality

15.1 Introduction

15.2 Rivpacs

15.3 Variants of Rivpacs

15.4 The Multivariate Approaches and the IBI

PART III. Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Chapter 16. Water-Quality Indices

16.1 Introduction

16.2 The Best WQI?

16.3 The Path Ahead

16.4 The Last Word

Index