Methodology for Reliable Assessment of Water Quality. I. Risk-based Rationing and Evaluation

Abstract

The problems of ensuring the reliability of water quality assessment and optimizing its rationing are considered. Specific examples show that the usual interpretation of water quality standards and results of measurements of pollutants concentration as deterministic values does not comply with a number of provisions of Russian legislation and leads to errors, the consequences of which are incompatible with the requirements of environmental safety of water use. The reliability and stability of water use can only be guaranteed if both the measurement data and the established standards are considered as random values determined with an unavoidable error. In accordance with the probabilistic approach, one of the key tasks of water quality management is considered – determining the number of checks necessary for sufficiently reliable confirmation or refutation of the hypothesis of quality compliance with the standard. Various options for solving this problem in the framework of a risk-based approach are analyzed.