Modeling Continuous Water Quality in Real-Time with IoT and an Arduino Kit

Abstract

Quality water is essential to many aspects of life including agriculture, industry, and the economy. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), poor water quality is the root cause of 80 percent of the diseases in the world. In addition to supporting the health of people, the quality of water is one of the most important factors in a healthy ecosystem that supports a diversity of plants and wildlife. It is therefore imperative for us to continue to monitor the quality of our water supply. Some of the current methods for tracking water quality involve labor-intensive processes that can be expensive, time-consuming, and prone to data errors. As a result, this project aims to see if modern-day open-source technology can be deployed to make the process of water quality monitoring more effective and efficient by designing a proof-of-concept that visually depicts a water quality index (WQI) in real-time. The method used was to collect sample data from Fellows Lake in Missouri using Arduino sensors, IoT and then to use Python to compute an arithmetic WQI based on various water quality parameters. The results of the data indicated a WQI score of 70.14, which can be categorized as poor water quality. This proof-of-concept project demonstrates that water quality monitoring can be done by using modern-day open-source technology. While more research is needed, this new method for tracking water quality could be a game changer in terms of how and where we can track water quality.