Cost Water Quality Monitoring Devices
AFFORDABLE WATER QUALITY ANALYSIS: A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND REGULATION OF LOW- COST WATER QUALITY MONITORING DEVICES by Christopher Daniel Kelley A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland February 2018 Abstract Access to adequate supplies of potable water is a key driver of human health. Physical and chemical treatment processes are frequently necessary to make water safe to drink. Monitoring of water before, during, and after treatment is an essential component of the provision of potable water, and most aspects of water quality monitoring require electronic devices to augment human senses. Every nation sets rules governing the treatment and monitoring of drinking water, in an attempt to continuously ensure potability of drinking water supplies. Presently, however, the regulations governing the design of common electronic devices for water quality monitoring are developed and published by just two organizations – the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The implications of this regulatory situation on drinking water quality monitoring, particularly in low-resource settings, are largely (perhaps completely) unaddressed in existing literature. Turbidity, which may be summarized as cloudiness in a body of liquid due to the scattering of light by particles suspended in that body, is internationally recognized as a simple and useful monitoring parameter for drinking water treatment. Using turbidity as an exemplar, this dissertation examines the structure of regulations governing the design of water quality monitoring devices, and the potential impact that regulatory structure has on the design, fabrication, and marketing of water quality monitoring devices, including both closed-source and open-source technology.
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