Multicriteria Visual Approach to the Analysis of Water Quality—A Case Study of the Tisa River Basin in Serbia

Danijela Voza,Ivana Mladenović-Ranisavljević,Goran Babić,Milovan Vuković

doi:10.3390/w13243537

Danijela Voza, Ivana Mladenović-Ranisavljević + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243537

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Journal: Water	Publication Date: Dec 10, 2021
Citations: 3	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Nis, University of Belgrade

Abstract

The aim of this research is to provide the assessment of water quality with a wider scheme of interrelations between the water quality parameters and locations using a reliable visual approach of multicriteria PROMETHEE and GAIA methods. The case study of one of the largest and regionally most important catchment areas on the territory of the Republic of Serbia—the Tisa River Basin—was therein used. The analysis of water quality included scenarios for warm (summer), cold (winter), and average annual period. A partial and complete ranking of locations according to the quality of water was performed by applying the PROMETHEE method and expanded afterward by GAIA method analysis to point out critical locations with endangered water quality (M6, M4, and M11). Identified locations were then investigated in more detail using spider web graphs that revealed water quality variables of concern (PO4-P and N) and indicated the causes of its occurrence. The obtained results are in accordance with the results of physical and chemical tests that are regularly conducted by the official government agencies for environmental protection and the reports that are presented to the public. The presented approach can easily be applied to any water body to point out both the locations with reduced water quality and the specific parameters (causes) that affect the reduction of water quality at these locations, thereby enhancing and strengthening usual water quality assessments as well as water resources management in general.

Highlights

Managing international river basins around the world puts emphasis on obtaining and preserving good water quality of water bodies, due to arising economic, agricultural, industrial, technological, and other impacts on natural water resources in modern society [1,2]
The obtained results are in accordance with the results of physical and chemical tests that are regularly conducted by the official government agencies for environmental protection and the reports that are presented to the public
To rank the locations in the Tisa River Basin according to various water quality parameters, multicriteria decision-making methods of PROMETHEE and GAIA were applied

Summary

Introduction

Managing international river basins around the world puts emphasis on obtaining and preserving good water quality of water bodies, due to arising economic, agricultural, industrial, technological, and other impacts on natural water resources in modern society [1,2]. The parameters of the “load” refer to the monitoring of the form of nitrogen (NH4-N) and phosphorus (PO4-P), biological oxygen demand (BOD-5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), solutes, the content of suspended matter (SM), etc. Water quality influenced by various biological, chemical, and physical variables naturally found in water needs to be constantly monitored and evaluated in order to preserve balanced water quality over time [3,4]. Within the framework of this paper, the variables that are most often analyzed in the official index methods for evaluating the overall water quality of rivers and lakes are considered

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