Wireless technologies and embedded networked sensing: Application to integrated urban water quality management

The overall objective of our research is to establish a wireless network with embedded sensing capable of monitoring fundamental water quality parameters. The ability of these fundamental water quality parameters to be used for predicting the presence of emerging chemical contaminants in urban streams will also be determined. It is hypothesized that the water quality in streams draining similar impervious urban areas is controlled by the mean and variance of effective stormwater residence time. The mean and variance of water residence time, the time it takes urban runoff to travel between the impervious urban land and a receiving aquatic body, will be characterized by radio frequency identification technology (RFID), which will be augmented with the proposed wireless network. A small urban watershed will be equipped with wireless networked sensing to address the following objectives: (1) measurement of fundamental water quality and hydrologic parameters with spatially-dense and high frequency resolution, (2) correlation of general parameters with the presence and/or levels of emerging contaminants, and (3) integration of field measurements to the watershed using primarily the mean and variance of effective stormwater residence time. This approach will enable process-based scaling and forecasting of water quality in streams from the in-stream processes to the watershed level.