The role of reference conditions in water quality assessment: application of a fuzzy logic-based Decision Support System (DSS) in the Danube and Elbe River Basins

Ecological status classification of the Taizi River Basin, China: a comparison of integrated risk assessment approaches

“…Threshold refinement: Some thresholds (namely, the thresholds for the indicator "fish species richness") were refined according to expert opinion in the IRA application, which could be further improved when more historical or field data are available. A rigorous and transparent process has always to be followed in setting reference conditions or target values because, as previously discussed in Semenzin et al (2012), this is a sensitive step in the integrated risk assessment process that could lead to significantly different results irrespective of the algorithms included in the adopted methodologies; 3. The methodologies used for the integration of data from different domains: The IRA implements three hierarchical aggregation steps based on fuzzy inference system for the LoE biology (predominant LoE), and it applies t h e O O A O p r i n c i p l e f o r p h y s i c o -c h e m i s t r y, hydromorphology and chemistry (supportive LoE); these approaches lead to more stricter results with respect to the RHA methodology proposed by Leigh et al (2012) ( Table 3).…”

“…Geographical reference sites (i.e. specific locations on a water body that is minimally impaired and is representative of the expected ecological integrity) can constitute the best choice for deriving reference conditions (Semenzin et al 2012). When such sites do not exist for the river basin of interest, alternatives for setting the reference conditions can include historical or modelled data, established criteria or standards, expert opinion or local knowledge (Leigh et al 2012).…”

“…The ecological status assessment of Taizi River was performed by applying both the IRA methodology and the OOAO principle, which are both implemented in the environmental module of the MODELKEY DSS. For its application to the selected case study, the available datasets were processed according to the DSS database requirements (Semenzin et al 2012). …”

“…Specifically, the IRA methodology is based on a weight of evidence (WoE) approach to analyze and combine a set of environmental indicators grouped into five lines of evidence (LoE), namely, biology, chemistry, ecotoxicology, physico-chemistry and hydromorphology. The whole IRA methodology has been implemented as a specific module into a freeware geographic information system (GIS)-based decision support system, named MODELKEY DSS (Gottardo et al 2009), and has been applied to three European river basins: Llobregat, Elbe and Danube river basins (Gottardo et al 2011a(Gottardo et al , 2011bSemenzin et al 2012).…”

A decision support tool to enhance agricultural growth in the Mékrou river basin (West Africa)

“…Aimed at overcoming such limitations, DSSs are computer software programs that use models, data and other related information to make site-specific recommendations with various purposes. Recent examples in the farming sector include the management of agricultural pesticides ( Beck et al, 1989 ), farm financial planning ( Boggess et al, 1989 , Herrero et al, 1996 ), livestock enterprises ( Stuth and Lyons, 1993 ), and land and crop nutrient planning ( Basso et al, 2013 , Quemada and Cabrera, 1995 , Li et al, 2009 ), and river basin management Semenzin et al (2012) . DSSs have mainly been designed to support farm advisors and other involved technicians in their interaction with policy makers and farmers ( Nelson et al, 2002 ), although some systems allow direct use by the latter.…”