Best Water Quality Monitoring Tool

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Best Water Quality Monitoring Tool

We are implementing Simple Market-based Affordable Repairable Technologies (SMART) in Zambia. 

The goal is to create a self-supply chain of SMART water products like EMAS pumps, rope pumps and manually drilled boreholes. 

We are looking for a simple but good and reliable water quality monitoring system.

We would like it to have a survey, pictures or even videos and GPS coordinates of the water supply locations.

What is your experience with mWater?

Is it good for water quality monitoring and can it do the previously stated things?

Which monitoring system do you use and which one would you suggest?

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13 Answers

  1. We have chosen for mWater (www.mwater.co) It is a great product, free and with lots of great functionality. Have a look at www.jacana.help/mwater were all our progress is monitored and published almost real time.

    The system even shows which pumps are partly sponsored and which are Self-supply (fully paid by the owner). Four months after start of the project, we can see Self-supply already started.

    mwater_news.jpg

  2. Hi Rik,
     my team is working at an Open Hardware and Software project named ACRONET Paradigm (www.acronet.cc).  The most important device we developed within this project is represented by a datalogger featuring every configuration we propose. Its huge versatility allows to interface most of commercial sensors: if we are involved in a funded project, we normally collect users' requirements, develop the firmware and test the resulting Configurations in our "nursery". Usually, our aim is to design, realize and supply (as DIY Kits with no constraints regarding installation and maintenance activities) high-level professional solutions with low costs. Contact me if you think that our approach could be of your interest, it would be great to find a way to collaborate. Best regards, Adriano

  3. Hi Rik!

    We have developed an interactive and simple tool which supports water quality monitoring. It displays water quality on a map, with the identification of problematic sectors and periods. It supports different file formats, as pictures, videos, geographic information, etc. and the stored data can be extracted ay time. Here you can see a video of our software, Enki in action.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyaOtaPxuog&feature=youtu.be

    The video presents a case-study of a watershed, but the functionalities are the same in the distribution system. I also joined a poster of a case study of a project to develop a communication tool for distribution system. Please feel free to contact me for further information. Have a nice day! Anna

  4. Hi Rik,
    I recently used mWater to perform a field survey of water sources.
    I was able to store coordinates, photos, notes and chemical data using a low-cost cellphone.
    The mWater portal has some little bugs, but it enables to download all data in a text file to be used, in a GIS for instance.
    Feel free to contact me for further information.
    Bye,

    Giovanni

    1 Comment

  5. Hi Rik - I'm involved with a H2020 programme INTCATCH  that is developing not just tools but also innovative monitoring strategies so that those tools can be deployed effectively.  We are 11 months in but check out www.intcatch.eu website and out overview report. The key objective is to enable a range of new tools to be deployed in to support WQ investigations done by a range of stakeholders including citizen scientists, and in a 'strategy' (as opposed to a system,) that aims to deliver answers to investigation  questions in a systematic way. The pilot strategy is to be available for testing later this year, by the end of May.  In addition, the UK's Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) website https://www.catchmentbasedapproach.org  has a load of supporting information and advice that it provides to the catchment partnerships supporting the delivery of the Water Framework Directive.  One downloadable document is a on Citizen Science and Volunteer Monitoring and that includes reviews of monitoring equipment that is available - as well as smart phone apps.  My email is geoff@envsustain.co.uk best, Geoff

  6. The comments I am seeing focus mostly on e-coli.  Are there any "easy to use" reliable tests for looking for metals, organic compounds (without the need for FAAS, GC etc.)?  Our org is looking to deploying water test kits (and mitigation guidelines) for some of the places in SE Asia and Latin and South America. Regards

  7. Dear Rik Hannen

    For each study site, monitoring requirements in policies, regulations, and standards are set by the government. For those sites that require both operational monitoring and surveillance, operational monitoring involves more frequent sampling, more sampling points (source water through to point of use), and uses a wider range of tests and laboratories than does surveillance. For operational monitoring, the largest cities have dedicated laboratories (which are used only for drinking water monitoring) and collect and process many samples. Small cities and towns use shared laboratories (which are also used for purposes besides drinking water monitoring), and collect fewer samples and at lower frequencies. Operational monitoring of rural sites with point-source water supplies follows the same approach as for small cities, if they are operationally monitored at all. Surveillance monitoring is generally run by health departments, and relies on decentralised laboratory networks to monitor all water supplies.Marginal costs include sample collection and transport; materials for sample testing; and labor associated with sample collection, transportation, and sample analysis. Capital and capital maintenance costs were excluded, as they were not considered costs that would increase with increased compliance with testing requirements.

    1. Multi wavelength spectrophotometer with even lower costs than of simple photometers.

     2. Earth Force® Low-Cost Water Quality Monitoring Kit

    Coliform screening; kit performs 3 tests

    Temperature; kit performs unlimited number of tests

    Turbidity; kit performs unlimited number of tests

    pH; kit performs 10 tests

    Dissolved oxygen; kit performs 10 tests

    Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD); kit performs 10 tests

    Nitrate; kit performs 10 tests

    Phosphate; kit performs 10 tests

    3. watershedmonitoring.com 

    4. Visible Impact water quality monitoring

    5. Msabi

    6. GE Power , Water & Process Tech

    7. Sense  Grow,Online Remote Monitoring with IoT for Water Distribution & Treatment Plants

    https://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fimage.slidesharecdn.com%2Fnsullivan1130am2015-150701143709-lva1-app6891%2F95%2Fnora-sullivan-ohio-university-voinovich-school-water-quality-monitoring-theres-an-app-for-that-4-638.jpg%3Fcb%3D1435761493&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.slideshare.net%2FMichaelHewitt4%2Fnora-sullivan-ohio-university-voinovich-school-water-quality-monitoring-theres-an-app-for-that&docid=jUHMhjo34QWb9M&tbnid=Y-K7k7qoJylE8M%3A&vet=10ahUKEwjKs-zFmrPTAhUMNY8KHa5LCjIQMwhtKEEwQQ..i&w=638&h=479&bih=685&biw=1104&q=image%20of%20water%20quality%20monitoring%20tool&ved=0ahUKEwjKs-zFmrPTAhUMNY8KHa5LCjIQMwhtKEEwQQ&iact=mrc&uact=8

    https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj4pqCgq7PTAhWHqY8KHShJDxsQFghKMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fpmc%2Farticles%2FPMC4113879%2F&usg=AFQjCNHByF7KCMXK8tlrVnA3kc2A9BIHfg&sig2=dXJ-akBPWROHWYoL2JBi9A

     

    http://www.geinstruments.com/

     

    https://visibleimpact.org/index

     

    http://msabi.org/

    http://www.geinstruments.com/

     

    http://www.sensegrow.com/

    1 Comment

  8. Fecal pathogens are the greatest waterborne risk to health, and E. coli bacteria is the most reliable indicator of fecal contamination in water. I invite you to take a look at our simple, portable water quality test for E. coli called the Compartment Bag Test (CBT). The CBT is ideal for on-site testing in low resource, rural areas. Anyone can use it with little training.

    The CBT is also supported by the mWater mobile app, which automatically calculates our Most Probable Number (MPN) test results, and lets you create and share surveys and water quality data in real time.

    Please contact me with additional questions!

    Aquagenx: www.aquagenx.com

    Lisa Hirsh
    lhirsh@aquagenx.com

  11. A good, multi-variate ICT platfrom for monitopring such systems has been established by an orgnaisation known as Visible Solutions.  Name of the product is visible Impact and been used by myself with an orgnaisation I used to work with.#

    Use these links to check out....

     

    https://visibleimpact.org/index/home

     

    http://msabi.org/data/

    1 Comment

  12. watershedmonitoring.com has a good Water Quality Monitoring System. Contact their CEO Sonja Behmel and they will provide you with a demo and information about it

  13. I would go for biological monitoring as a simple, cheap and effective way of determining water quality issues - once identified by biological methods, then more expensive and complex chemical approaches can be used to determine the actual issue. South Africa uses the Southern African Scoring System (SASS) and a version of this was created by my four use in more northerly African countries like Zambia - it's the Nambian Scoring System (NASS). There is also a simplified version of SASS called miniSASS

     

    1 Comment