Spatially Distributed Water Quality Monitoring using Floating Sensors

Developing countries have poor wastewater management infrastructure. Wastewater from various sources such as domestic sewage, untreated industrial discharge, agricultural runoff, and animal waste is usually dumped into surface water resources such as canals, streams and rivers. This results in the degraded quality of surface water which poses adverse effects on the ecosystem and human socio-economic needs in many different ways. Considering the socioeconomic needs of the current and future generations, steps need to be taken to restore these water bodies to their natural form. In this regard, we require some monitoring tools which can help identify the main sources of pollution. To answer such questions, the authors have developed a Lagrangian sensor system which is capable of logging and transmitting spatially distributed GPS tagged water quality data in real-time from water bodies such as drains, canals, streams and rivers. It can measure the physico-chemical parameters of water quality such as, pH, dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity, oxidation-reduction potential, temperature and turbidity. The paper describes the design, development and deployment stages of the floating device. We report our initial successful field experiment of continuously recording six water quality parameters across 4.3 km length of an irrigation canal in Pakistan.