Development of an integrated system for early warning of recreational waters contamination

Abstract

An early warning system for pollution events of recreational waters is being developed, within the scope of FP7 “PREPARED – Enabling Change” project and the Portuguese SIMAI and SI-GeA projects. The system is being applied to the Tagus estuary, accounting for the impact of the outfall from Alcântara combined catchment, the largest catchment of Lisbon. This system explicitly integrates the monitoring and modelling of the different physical and contamination processes from the catchment to the receiving water, at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales. The work includes the development of the following key activities: 1. Selection of the pilot area and gathering of data; 2. Mathematical modelling (sewer system and estuary); 3. Experimental surveys; 4. On-line monitoring of hydraulic and water quality parameters (sewers and estuary); 5. Integration of the models and monitoring data within a computational platform for real-time control, based on an existing platform for the estuary hydrodynamics forecast (http://ariel.lnec.pt); 6. Development of a prototype early warning system based on the integrated monitoring and modelling system and on the real time forecast platform. The first three activities are almost completed. Water quality on-line monitoring stations are being installed and models integrated within the platform. This paper aims to describe the methodology and the preliminary results for this early warning system.