Importance of Biological Parameters of Water Quality to Reform Water Quality Index in Practice

摘要

Good quality of water to drink or for meeting any demand is expensive these days. An economical and sustainable method of water treatment has not yet been achieved in our water history. Water specialists and water/water related companies are trying hard on technologies from macro to nano methods but end up with some limitations and some compromises. Studies have shown that microbiological pollutants are the significant contaminants for water-related diseases and researches have been carried out to assess the efficiency of water treatment plant to remove microbiological pollutants from the raw water. Globally the use of chlorine-based process for disinfection is the most successful and common in water treatment. Studies have shown that in Malaysia as well chlorination process is the best method to produce "microbiologically safe" water until water problem surfaced in year 2009. Total Coliform violations in the complied chlorine treated water posed problem within the water treatment plant located in Selangor. There is an urgent need to investigate on this problem as the systems continue to deteriorate in recent years. In view of this, properly planned and interdisciplinary studies are being conducted on the causes and sources of Total Coliform-positive occurrences in the water treatment systems. The current WQI to ascribe water quality are mostly physio-chemical based, without consideration for biological specifically microbial based indicators. The objective of the paper is to present the approach of redesigning WQI using neural network and fuzzy logic systems. The model could be packaged into software and further to construct hardware (Water analyser), a hand held unit to test the status of quality of water on-site, for every hour and any time scale. These methods have been successfully used in many fields of studies including water and water related research. Thus, the risk of choosing macro to nanotechnologies to treat the water could be made appropriate by this invention of new software and hardware.