INNOVATIVE GROUNDWATER MONITORING TECHNOLOGY

The rapid development of sensor and wireless communication technologies has increased the use of automatic (wireless) sensors in environmental monitoring. The availability of smarter, smaller and cheaper sensors measuring a wider range of environmental parameters has enabled continuous-timed monitoring of environment and real-time applications. Along with developments in sensor and communication technology, complex environmental problems have rapidly increased the need for temporally and spatially accurate data [1]. Focusing on the quality of groundwater, the role of ITC it is important for an excellent security system, for the population using the water for agriculture or just as drinking water and if impacted, can pose risks to human health and the environment. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) which has the ability of monitoring remote it is considered like a best solution to the early detection of groundwater contamination. In this paper, we present an appropriate prototype, a design for a groundwater monitoring system. Currently a similar prototype implementation has been built that can be demonstrated in a laboratory environment [2,3]. A complete prototype system was then constructed and placed in an active groundwater monitoring well [4]. The sensor node is based on Arduino UNO microcontroller, receiving the data from the sensors and transmitting to the database on Raspberry pi 3, remotely accessing all the data [4]. The design of proposed prototype is focused on the water quality in a wellbore, at different depths to obtain the water quality in different aquifers. In this way, the people will have quick access to the groundwater data and making decisions in case of contamination. The water quality parameters measured include temperature, pH and electrical conductivity which is directly related to the water salinization, dissolved oxygen probe (DO), oxidation reduction potential (ORP), and for air quality parameters measured by electrochemical sensors, include CH4 and CO2 gas, by detecting close to a wellbore an eventual gas leak. The published experimental studies emphasize the need for continuous water quality monitoring with sufficient spatial and temporal resolution and demonstrate that the state of art sensing technologies fail to satisfy this requirement [5,6]. In many wellbores, access for groundwater monitoring can be difficult, therefore the use of new sensors can be a good solution. To have a good validity of the data from the new sensors, sampling and laboratory analysis occurs to monitor groundwater quality changes, to be considered like a calibration with a reference data. If we have a natural gas leak we will be expecting to detect an increase in the soil gas concentrations (on land) or changing pH, Eh, and aqueous chemistry (in groundwater or surface water), and thus continuous monitoring stations are important for early leak detection and make right decisions. The decreasing costs of sensors and innovative technology will allow us to use many networks in different environment conditions. Finally, by using continuous monitoring system one will have large quantities of data, with the opportunity to use statistical methods to interpret the results.