New Technologies Enable High Resolution Monitoring

For over twenty years, the Environment Agency has employed a general quality assessment (GQA) scheme to assess river water quality in terms of chemistry, biology and nutrients. GQA has helped drive environmental improvements by dealing with the main sources of pollution, such as discharges from sewage treatment works. However, in line with the catchment based approach of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) and in tandem with advances in technology, the Agency is now adopting a more sophisticated approach to monitoring which involves a much greater use of high resolution continuous monitoring and ‘sensor-web’ based technologies.