The Outdoor Global Drinking-Water-Quality Database & Map is our effort to educate and inform the community on drinking water quality issues with links to citizen science, environmental education, and other watershed-based initiatives worldwide.
Rather than creating an online map that just tells you the water's general quality, we created a "sharing" platform that permits us to share privately-collected water quality data with public drinking water information and the findings of our outreach.
To keep data private, we convert the surface water quality data into a "Water Quality Score" for the water using the Surface Water Quality Index Calculator. The current map includes data provided by users and data compiled through the KnowYourH2O program and publicly available data from watershed organizations, environmental groups, state, and federal databases.
The current Surface Water Water Quality Index Calculator uses nine factors to develop a surface water score. The parameters are: Dissolved Oxygen Percent Saturation, Fecal Coliform Count, pH, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Temperature Change from a reference site, Total Phosphate, Nitrate, Turbidity, and Total Dissolved Solids. The field and laboratory water quality measurements are converted to index values, and the results are presented using a water quality scale that goes from 0 to 100. The data point location is used to develop the map, but the details about the sample and the raw data are not shared with the community, only the score.
Our goal was to create a platform to share surface water quality data that can be used to help educate and inform the community, plus use the data to predict potential problem areas that would suggest where additional work is needed. In addition to water quality data, we hope to develop other tools that include: estimating the trophic status, estimating primary productivity, other environmental issues, as well as creating a Global Map and Database of Citizen Scientists, Watershed Organizations, and other grassroots efforts.