Water quality monitoring is essential to understanding the complex dynamics of water ecosystems, the impact of human infrastructure on them and to ensure the safe use of water resources for drinking, recreation and transport. High frequency in-situ monitoring systems are being increasingly employed in water quality monitoring schemes due to their much finer temporal measurement scales possible and reduced cost associated with manual sampling, manpower and time needed to process results compared to traditional grab-sampling. Modelling water quality data at higher frequency reduces uncertainty and allows for the capture of transient events, although due to potential constraints of data storage, inducement of noise, and power conservation it is worthwhile not using an excessively high sampling frequency. In this study, high frequency data recorded in Bristol's Floating Harbour as part of the local UKRIC Urban Observatory activities is presented to analyse events not captured by the current manual sampling and laboratory analysis scheme. The frequency components of the time-series are analysed to work towards understanding the necessary sampling frequency of temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), fluorescent dissolved organic matter (fDOM), turbidity and conductivity as indicators of water quality. This study is the first of its kind to explore a statistical approach for determining the optimum sampling frequency for different water quality parameters using a high frequency dataset. Furthermore, it provides practical tools to understand how different sampling frequencies are representative of the water quality changes.

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<p>Water resources management is a delicate, complex and challenging task. It involves monitoring quality, quantity, timing and distribution of water in order to meet the needs of the population’s usage demand. Nowadays these decisions have to be made in a continuously evolving landscape where quantity and quality of water resources change in time with uncertainty.</p><p>Throughout history, access to clean water has always been a huge desire from urban settlements. People built towns and villages close to water sources. In most cases, streams brought clean water in and washed away polluted water. Nowadays the largest strains on water quality typically occur within urban areas, with degradation coming from point and diffuse sources of pollutants and alteration of natural flow through built-up areas.</p><p>Municipalities are acting to reduce the impact of climate change on existing cities and meet the needs of the growing urban population. In many places around the world costal flood defences were built involving construction of barriers that lock the tide and keep the water coming from in-land rivers creating reservoirs close to the shore.</p><p>These man-made barriers stop the natural cleaning action of the tide on transitional waters. This causes severe water quality problems like eutrophication and high levels of bacteria. On the positive side, these water reservoirs are used as recreational water, drinking water, agricultural water. As many more people are moving to live in urban areas, its overall demand for clean water and discharge of polluted water is constantly growing. Hence monitoring and foreseeing water quality in these urban surface waters is fundamental in order to be able to meet the water demand in future scenarios.</p><p>Many cities have already successfully implemented smart water technologies in many types of the water infrastructures. Monitoring water quality has always been a challenging and costly task. It has been so far the most difficult water characteristic to monitor remotely in real time. Lack of high frequency and accurate data has always been one of the main challenges. Today, using information and communication technologies (ICT) is possible to set up a real time water quality monitoring system that will allow to deepen the understanding of water quality dynamics leading to a better management of urban water resources.</p><p>A case study will be presented where a real time water quality monitoring system for the surface water of Bristol Floating Harbour has been deployed in the UK and water quality data have been analysed using artificial intelligence algorithms in order to understand the link between ambient weather data (i.e., precipitation, temperature, solar radiation, wind, etc.) and surface water pollution. Preliminary results of a water quality prediction model will also be presented showing the capabilities of predicting water quality as a new tool in municipality’s decision-making processes and water resources management.</p>

<p>Science has a diversity problem, and engineering sciences are no exceptions. While equality and diversity issues are gaining attention and progress is being made, tackling discrimination and creating an inclusive environment remains an open challenge. Women, people belonging to minority groups and people with disabilities are under-represented in higher academic ranks, which may discourage early-career researchers of these groups to pursue a career in engineering sciences. Conscious and unconscious bias, insecurity in how to intervene in inappropriate situations, amongst other things, compromise both the potential of research groups and the well-being of individuals.</p><p>We will present the outcome of a one-day workshop that will be held in Bristol on the 2<sup>nd</sup> of April 2020: Equality in Engineering.  This is the "spin-off" of an event we organised last year for water scientists at the national level (UK), which attracted a lot of interest and where we were asked to organise an event specifically for PhD students in Engineering. Therefore, the workshop aims at educating and engaging Engineering PhD students on equality issues. PhD students had the opportunity to express their interests on specific topics on an online survey. Thus, we will invite speakers at different career stages to talk about problems related to 1) Work-life balance (e.g. parenting & maintaining a career in academia), 2) The importance of role models and lack of leaders from minority groups and 3) unconscious biases and micro-inequalities. The discussions will be followed by a practical training session on race/ethnicity, equality and privilege. Finally, a group discussions session will be held aiming at identifying major issues related to equality in engineering, which still restrain an inclusive academic environment and ideas on how to overcome these issues. Moreover, during this session participants will have the opportunity to exchange ideas and reflect upon the things highlighted during the previous sessions.</p><p>We aspire that the outcomes of this discussion can serve as a call or guideline for future actions, both at the local scale and at the institutional level (e.g. larger research organisations such as the EGU). We also hope to initiate or follow-up on discussions during the EGU General Assembly as we regard overcoming equality-related issues in our society as an ongoing process.</p>

This project focuses on the condition of surface water in urban areas, an important aspect of smart cities. Water quality monitoring has an important role in health and environmental management. This study aims at creating a prediction model for water quality based on real-time data which will help policy and decision makers.