WQA: an integrated DSS and statistical package for water quality data management, processing and analysis

Abstract

Increasing concern regarding deterioration of freshwater and marine systems such as the Murray Darling Basin and Great Barrier Reef has prompted the need for better water quality and land management across the country. Whilst there has been an increased awareness of the need for better monitoring and assessments of water quality, there are limited tools available to assist water managers to quickly and easily analyse, assess and report on monitoring data. A major survey conducted in Australia revealed that most organisations spend a great deal of time and effort dealing with water quality information, and often require assistance to undertake valid data analysis and assessment. Therefore, Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) in collaboration with the eWater Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) has designed and developed a software package to streamline the data management, processing, analysis and reporting of water quality data and related information. The target end user for this tool includes a broad range of people from State and Local Governments, industry, consulting, natural resources management groups, community groups, land holders and research institutions. The software package is known as Water Quality Analyser (WQA), and has been designed using contemporary science and state of the art decision support software (DSS) technology. The software includes interactive tools, databases, knowledge bases, statistical approaches, decision-making processes and a comprehensive collection of relevant support information. The software was recently upgraded from the version first released in 2009. The latest software package contains the following five modules: • Data Management and Visualisation Tool: This is a new module of the software that performs data import and export for various databases and file formats; visualisation of time series data; processing, cleaning, infilling, re-sampling and data transformation, and exploratory analysis; • Guideline Tool: This feature allows calculation of locally relevant water quality guideline values; test datasets against guideline values to provide a statistically sound indication of the condition of a site; and holds updated national and state specific water quality guidelines in a local database; • Loads Tool: The enhanced load calculations include a variety of methods for estimating pollutant loads in streams using time-series flow and limited concentration data for both long-term and single events. It now includes a function to calculate event mean concentration (EMC); • Trend Tool: The new trend tool detects water-quality trends, and includes statistical tests for change and randomness in water-quality data and other time-series data; and • eGuide: This feature provides access to a number of commonly referred to water-quality related documents (e.g. ANZECC publications) in a searchable electronic format. The software has been upgraded based on feedback from users including state agencies, councils and land care groups. It has undergone extensive testing and verification covering WQA's applicability, useability, algorithms and encapsulated knowledge. Currently DERM scientists are using an enhanced version of WQA for calculating stream pollutant loads and estimating EMC values for catchment modelling purposes. The enhanced tool can also be used to compare modelling and monitoring data. The software will be commercially released by eWater Innovation (eWI), a subsidiary of eWater CRC, and can be accessed via eWater CRC toolkit (toolkit.net.au) website.