Integrated Use of Spatial Data and Learning Algorithms to Detect Water Quality Trends

This paper presents the first results of a study which investigates river basin water quality management based on the ability of GIS to integrate different data sources into a common geographical database. The overall objective of this research is to develop a scheme for water management and improve the likelihood of detecting water quality trends and to determine if variability in water quality parameters among a number of catchments can be explained by their differences in topography, land use, soils and demographic data. The expected benefits of the research are related to the acquisition of a description of the water quality in basins using easily available data, as satellite imagery or maps, that can be used in regions where adequate observations are not available.