On-line monitoring of reservoirs for risk management

Abstract

The Australian water industry is moving to adopt a risk-based approach to the management of water quality. This approach requires a detailed assessment of the entire system from catchment to reservoirs, treatment and distribution to identify "Critical Control Points", which by definition, require both continuous monitoring and are also process steps that are amenable to intervention or corrective action to prevent a downstream problem. Reservoirs have a role in the system as both a source and a barrier to hazards, and knowledge of how these hazards behave is critical if they are to be effectively managed. This paper describes a case study of how the understanding of water quality processes and the time-scales over which they occur in a reservoir, can be combined with on-line monitoring for hazard prediction and early detection. The hazards considered are cyanobacterial growth, pathogen contamination associated with intruding inflows, and iron and manganese regeneration from sediments during stratification.