Invited Speaker

Abstract: Emerging issues such as climate change impacts and the interest in new contaminants in water contribute to the need for more sophisticated water quality monitoring strategies. In Canada, most citizens live in municipalities where drinking water is supplied by surface water sources. Surface water vulnerability is particularly high during specific climatic events such as drought-rewetting cycles and freeze-thaw cycles. During sudden climatic events such as heavy rain, events of source water contamination can occur potentially impacting the performance of treatment plants and the quality of the distributed water to consumers. Indeed, climate events could affect the drinking water supply system in several ways and through all its steps, including at the source and during treatment and distribution. To ensure safe drinking water for consumers at all times, monitoring strategies for water quality should consider the different components of the multi-barrier approach: the source watershed, the water treatment plant and the municipal distribution network. Such monitoring strategies must consider various types of contaminants and indicators (chemical, microbiological, physical), representative locations for data collection to describe the spatial variability of water quality, and representative periods and frequencies for data collection to describe the temporal and seasonal variability of water quality. In the last five years, our research group has developed approaches, methodologies and techniques for water quality monitoring that allow generating data and knowledge useful for decision-making purposes. Various tools have been elaborated for water quality assessment, detection of contamination events, prioritizing of operational interventions, and identification of vulnerable populations to potential water quality failures. Spatio-temporal databases for numerous water quality parameters, including contaminants of emerging interest, have been developed during field sampling programs. Based on these data, diagnostic and predictive models have been developed for early warning purposes, monitoring prioritization and population exposure assessment to contaminants. In this conference, the approaches and phases for data generation, model development and decision-making tools elaboration will be presented. The presentation will be illustrated with real case studies in municipal drinking water utilities of Canada.

Biography: Dr. Rodriguez, PhD in Civil Engineering, is professor of Université Laval, at the School of Urban and Regional Planning. He holds the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Management and Surveillance of Drinking Water Quality. The expertise of Dr. Rodriguez revolves around a unique combination of water engineering, urban & regional planning and environmental modelling. He has published about 180 papers in peer-reviewed journals, presented more than 300 scientific presentations in conferences and made more than 40 talks as guest speaker. The value of Dr. Rodriguez’s research activities in drinking water quality management has been enhanced through his ability to cooperate with researchers in other disciplines such as urban planning, environmental health and epidemiology, toxicology, urban hydraulics, decision-making processes, environmental modeling, environmental engineering, spatial analysis with geographical information system, water economics, participatory processes and environmental legislation.