Standards Development

Scope

The continuous monitoring of water quality parameters can provide real time information on temporal variability compared with sampling campaigns conducted at fixed intervals which can miss significant events such as a concentration peak during a flood or rainfall episode.

Moreover, in the event of pollution due to industrial accidents or transport on inland waterways for example, it is vital to be able to detect these events as early as possible and react rapidly to limit their impacts on the environment and possible drinking water resource. 

Consequently, the choice of having recourse to continuous measuring devices (CMDs) is directly linked to the advantages of obtaining a rapid measurement (a few seconds to a few minutes) at short time intervals (from a few seconds to a few hours) and in most cases in real time. Furthermore, it is possible to use the resulting measurements to automatically trigger actions, such as taking a sample for further analysis and/or stopping pumping of a drinking water resource.

In order to obtain representative and reliable measurements when using CMDs to monitor water quality, this document specfies minimum requirements for the following four steps:

1) Selection: defining the user requirements, the purposes of the required measurements, associated data quality requirements, and choice of CMDs.

2) Installation: verifying a complete and correct delivery of the procured CMD and verifying a correctly functioning on-site installation, operation and communication of the CMD.

3) Qualification: validate that the correctly installed CMD meets all of the original defined requirements.

4) Operation: implementation of operating and maintenance procedures, processing of data and document traceability

This document is associated with EN 17075 which specifies general requirements and performance test procedures for portable and fixed position continuous measuring devices that are used in an in-line or online operating position to measure physical and chemical measurands in water.

Continuous measuring devices are widely used for compliance monitoring purposes under national and European regulations.

Purpose

This new project was developed to answer a need identified in the strategic position paper on “Standardization needs in continuous water quality monitoring” written by CEN SABE (N333) :

“In order to ensure the reliability of the data generated by monitoring devices (MDs), quality assurance and control systems need to be implemented to demonstrate the fitness-for-purpose of the MDs prior to installation and that their performance levels can be maintained in the long run.”