On Friday, Aug 29, 2014 the defence of PhD thesis Novel Tools for Water Quality Monitoring – From Field to Laboratory prepared by Teemu Näykki took place. Teemu Näykki works as team leader at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE). The thesis introduces a set of new tools for water quality monitoring. These include:
- Tutorial computer software aimed for chemical laboratories for estimation of measurement uncertainty, called MUkit, mainly based on the approach described in Nordtest TR 537.
- A novel tool for a real-time uncertainty estimation procedure of a field sensor on-line measurement.
- Several examples to improve the reliability of analytical results by enhanced quality control procedures. For dissolved oxygen concentration measurement, an in-house dissolved ofygen reference material can be used to promote the estimation of measurement uncertainty. For mercury, enriched stable 196Hg isotope is applied for monitoring the stability of total mercury in water samples. A glass surface silylation procedure is applied for minimising mercury losses and contamination.
- One of the tools for future water quality monitoring is based on crowdsourcing, where citizens’ observations are applied. This trend is promoted by validating an innovative measuring system (Secchi3000) for water turbidity field measurements.
The defence was very successful and the results are expected to be of significant help to field laboratories in assuring and improving the quality of their chemical analysis results for water monitoring.
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