During IWRA’s Water Quality session at KIWW 2018, the upcoming report Developing a Global Compendium on Water Quality Guidelines was announced, along with the release of its draft Executive Summary. This report collects and examines examples of existing recommendations for influent water quality, as applied to various human and ecosystem uses. It provides examples and analysis of existing water quality guidelines. Building on these case studies, the report explores new perspectives, and raises pertinent questions for future work on the topic, including what an online compendium of such guidelines might look like. Keep an eye out for the release of this publication in November 2018! For more information please visit www.iwra.org/waterquality.
This report’s primary objective is to lay the groundwork for an online compendium to improve access to examples of water quality guidelines and facilitate a better understanding of how water quality demand and supply can contribute to appropriate and economical multi-sectoral water resource management.
The contents and outputs of the report are oriented around three overlapping domains: water use, geographical scale, and multi-disciplinary perspectives. Due to the nature of the water resource, there are few water quality guidelines that address the full range of uses. This report is no exception, but focuses on five main categories of water use: domestic, agriculture, industry, energy, and ecosystems. After examining international, regional and national guidelines from these water uses, the report presents key findings and recommendations based on these guidelines, as well as a proposed database structure to encourage future work in the topic.
