Study of the requirements of an autonomous system for surface water quality monitoring

In recent years, there has been increasing awareness of the preservation, protection and sustainable use of natural resources. Water resources, being one of the most important natural resources, face major threats due to contamination by pollutants of various types and origins. Maintaining the quality of water resources requires more robust, reliable and more frequent monitoring than traditional techniques of data collection based on sporadic, discontinuous and manual processes. The management of large geographical areas, the insufficient spatiotemporal discretization of the values of samples collected by traditional processes and the unpredictability of natural phenomena, require a new approach to data collection procedures. This article, which is the result of ongoing research, defines the technical requirements and technologies used in a continuous and regular monitoring of surface water quality in freshwater systems, whose data acquisition system helps to identify the sources of pollution and the contaminants flow along the waterways. The design of a versatile real-time water quality monitoring system, which, due to its environmental constraints should be based on renewable energies and wireless transfer of energy, will contribute to improve the management and effective protection of water resources.