Water Quality Monitoring Tools

Overview

It is much less costly to predict and prevent problems than it is to deal with the consequences of water quality issues. Process Research Solutions has the tools available for you to do this. Although being proactive on water quality costs money, having water quality problems is even more costly!

Proactive Monitoring Book

Start with Process Research Solutions' practical step-by-step approach described in our book, "Water Distribution System Monitoring: A Practical Approach for Evaluating Drinking Water Quality" published by CRC Press. Click this link to order the book.

Monitoring Strategy Development

The monitoring book first describes some fundamental concepts for understanding the chemistry and microbiology in the water distribution system. By the end of Chapter 2, you will know how to develop a monitoring strategy specific to the needs of your water system. If you need assistance in developing this strategy, Process Research Solutions is available to give further expert advice to guide you.

Standardized Monitoring Station

The monitoring book provides the drawings and equipment lists to assemble a monitoring station for obtaining representative water samples from the distribution system. The intent of the monitoring stations is to make a standardized and representative method available to all water utilities for obtaining critical water quality data to carry out routine proactive monitoring strategies. This is an open source technology that all can use.

Most water utility personnel are able to assemble and install this simple equipment. For utilities that have no time to assemble the monitoring stations, there are private companies (unaffiliated with Process Research Solutions) that will assemble them for you. Contact Process Research Solutions for further information.

Data Management Software

Monitoring water quality produces a lot of important data. Raw numbers are only useful if you have the means to store and analyze them. Process Research Solutions offers data management software called, My Monitoring Data®, to simplify working with water quality data. The My Monitoring Data® software is a user-friendly interface for the common Microsoft Access® database. Specific data can later be retrieved easily from the database and sent to a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet for reporting and analysis. For more information, visit our software web page.

Monitoring Data Analysis

The monitoring book explains that simple graphing of water quality data over time will give a water utility manager and operator sufficient information for operational decision-making. If water utility personnel desire to glean more information out of their water quality data, the time-series graphs can be turned into control charts similar to those used for industrial process control and improvement. Contact Process Research Solutions for this and other data analyses.