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Improved microbial risk assessment of groundwater
journal contribution
posted on 2013-07-09, 10:46 authored by Sam Godfrey, Michael SmithThe World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimate that at the
beginning of the year 2000, one-sixth (1.1 billion) of the
world’s population lacked access to a safe water supply
(WHO/UNICEF 2000). Despite global efforts made in the
decade between 1980–1990, the majority of the worlds’
population with access to safe water remains in developed
countries (see Fig. 1).
To address the inadequate level of coverage of safe
water supply in developing countries, the United Nations
established various initiatives including the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and the development of a
Global Rapid Assessment of Drinking Water Quality
Methodology (WHO/UNICEF 2000). The principal target
of the MDGs is to Ensure environmental sustainability by
halving the proportion of people without access to safe
water by 2015 – where safe water is defined as a water
supply that is devoid of disease-producing pathogenic
bacteria/viruses and highly toxic substances (WHO/
UNICEF 2000; Howard et al. 2001).
Due to the high cost and questionable sustainability of
piped water supply in developing countries, many rural
and peri-urban communities are solely reliant on water
supply from shallow groundwater. This essay discusses
appropriate methods for assessing and managing the
“safety” of this shallow groundwater in developing
countries. It will: 1. Acknowledge the increasing global importance of
chemical contamination,
2. Highlight the significance of assessment of the vulnerability
of groundwater to microbial contamination,
3. Emphasise the specific challenges faced by hydrogeologists
in assessing microbial risk in the future.
History
School
- Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Research Unit
- Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)
Citation
GODFREY, S. and SMITH, M.D., 2005. Improved microbial risk assessment of groundwater. Hydrgeology Journal, 13 (1), pp. 321 - 324Publisher
© Springer-VerlagVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publication date
2005Notes
This article is closed access, it was published in the serial Hydrogeology Journal [© Springer-Verlag]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10040-004-0412-7ISSN
1431-2174Publisher version
Language
- en
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