Initial Deployment of a Mobile Sensing System for Water Quality in Urban Canals
Name
water-14-02834-v2.pdf
Size
8.15 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4e9242c923a50055a97a5e8a4375e9e9
Author(s)
Meyers, Drew
Zheng, Qinmin
Duarte, Fábio
Ratti, Carlo
Hemond, Harold F.
van der Blom, Marcel
van der Helm, Alex W.C.
Whittle, Andrew J.
Date Issued
September 12, 2022
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
Water 14 (18): 2834 (2022)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Although water quality has extensively improved over the last decade, recreational uses of the canal network in Amsterdam are limited by variations in water quality associated with stormwater runoff and episodic harmful algal blooms. The current systems for monitoring water quality are based on a stationary network of sampling points, offline testing methods, and online measurements of conventional water quality parameters on board a boat that continuously navigates the urban canal network. Here we describe the development and deployment of online algal sensors on board the boat, including a prototype LED-induced fluorescence instrument for algal identification and quantification. We demonstrate that by using only a single patrol vessel, we are able to achieve enough sampling coverage to observe spatiotemporal heterogeneity of algal and chemical water quality within the canal network. The data provide encouraging evidence that opportunistic measurements from a small number of mobile platforms can enable high-resolution mapping and can be used to improve the monitoring of water quality across the city compared to the current network of fixed sampling locations. We also discuss the challenges of operating water quality sensors for long-term autonomous monitoring.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Senseable City Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/w14182834
