An Efficient Method for Assessing Water Quality Based on Bayesian Belief Networks

Abstract

A new methodology is developed to analyse existing water quality monitoring networks. This methodology incorporates different aspects of monitoring, including vulnerability/probability assessment, environmental health risk, the value of information, and redundancy reduction. The work starts with a formulation of a conceptual framework for groundwater quality monitoring to represent the methodology’s context. This work presents the development of Bayesian techniques for the assessment of groundwater quality. The primary aim is to develop a predictive model and a computer system to assess and predict the impact of pollutants on the water column. The process of the analysis begins by postulating a model in light of all available knowledge taken from relevant phenomenon. The previous knowledge as represented by the prior distribution of the model parameters is then combined with the new data through Bayes’ theorem to yield the current knowledge represented by the posterior distribution of model parameters. This process of updating information about the unknown model parameters is then repeated in a sequential manner as more and more new information becomes available.