Environmental Risk Management tools for water quality monitoring

National Oceanographic Centre
Southampton (UK), 30th March 2009

The problem:

Modern society has brought about the severe danger of our environment's degradation, not only through catastrophes (hard risks), but also through "soft risks", which means degrading it slowly step by step leading to disaster.
Both risks must be effectively monitored.
Chemical analyses for water quality measurements are usually carried out in laboratories with exact and expensive instruments, using colorimetry, fluorimetry, photometry,potentiometry and other methods.
For many years the in-situ water monitoring in-the-field has been considered very important.
This can be achieved by developing small and easy-to-maintain smart sensors.
These sensors are able to detect a large spectrum of pollutants that are typical for the monitored region.
The flexibility and long-term reliability of the system is therefore important.
This is why it is very important to develop a general system for in-situ, real time water monitoring, using both terrestrial and spatial monitoring.
This will lead to having permanent control of water resources in Europe.