River Water Quality Monitoring 1990 to 2018: Biochemical Oxygen Demand

1990 to 2018 raw data from river monitoring sites in Northern Ireland, collected for Water Framework Directive (WFD) compliance. The dataset likely contains measurements of biochemical oxygen demand and other physico-chemical, biological, and hydromorphological parameters for assessing surface water status. It is presented as unprocessed raw data, which may include erroneous values and lacks limits of detection required for official status calculations.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in biochemical oxygen demand and other pollutants in Northern Irish rivers.
• Assessing raw monitoring data for compliance with the Water Framework Directive's 'Good Ecological Status' targets.
• Calibrating water quality models using site-specific parameters like altitude and alkalinity referenced in the description.
• Identifying potential data anomalies or contamination events flagged as erroneous results in the raw data.

Strengths

• Provides a 28-year time series (1990-2018) of water quality monitoring.
• Covers multiple assessment criteria for the Water Framework Directive: biological, hydromorphological, and physico-chemical properties.
• Is part of a planned series of water open data releases from the Northern Ireland government, indicating ongoing curation.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low: column names, row counts, and precise update dates are not provided across sources.
• Data is raw and unvalidated, containing potential errors from typos, sampling, or contamination that require user processing.
• Lacks critical metadata for WFD calculations, specifically Limits of Detection and Limit of Quantitation.

Provenance

Source

Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) / Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), Northern Ireland.

Collection Method

Monitoring at river sites, likely for regulatory compliance with the Water Framework Directive.

Time Range

1990 to 2018

Freshness

2026-04-15 14:20:31.568017

Geography

Northern Ireland (rivers, lakes, transitional waters, and coastal waters)