Comparison among different ASEAN water quality indices for the assessment of the spatial variation of surface water qual
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Comparison among different ASEAN water quality indices for the assessment of the spatial variation of surface water quality in the Selangor river basin, Malaysia Yong Jie Wong & Yoshihisa Shimizu & Kai He & Nik Meriam Nik Sulaiman
Received: 22 December 2019 / Accepted: 9 August 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The assessment of surface water quality is often laborious, expensive and tedious, as well as impractical, especially for the developing and middleincome countries in the ASEAN region. The application of the water quality index (WQI), which depends on several independent key parameters, has great potential and is a useful tool in this region. Therefore, this study aims to find out the spatial variability of various water quality parameters in geographical information system (GIS) environment and perform a comparative study among the ASEAN WQI systems. At present, there are four ASEAN countries which have implemented the WQI system to evaluate their surface water quality, which are (i) Own WQI system—Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam—and (ii) Adopted WQI system: Indonesia. A spatial distribution of 12 water quality parameters in the Selangor river basin, Malaysia, was plotted and then applied into the different ASEAN WQI systems. The WQI values obtained from the different WQI systems have an appreciable difference, even for the same water samples due to the disparity in the parameter selection and the standards among them. WQI systems which consider all biophysicochemical parameters Y. J. Wong (*) : Y. Shimizu : K. He Research Center for Environmental Quality Management, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, 1-2 Yumihama, Otsu, Shiga 520-0811, Japan e-mail: [email protected] N. Nik Sulaiman Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
provide a consistent evaluation (Very Poor), but the system which either considers physicochemical or biochemical parameters gives a relatively lenient evaluation (Fair–Poor). The Selangor river basin is stressed and impacted by all physical, biological and chemical parameters caused by both the aridity of the climate and anthropogenic activities. Therefore, it is crucial to include all these aspects into the evaluation and corresponding actions should be taken. Keywords ASEAN . Water quality index . Spatial analysis . Selangor river basin
Introduction Since the inception of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967, the oldest functioning regional intergovernmental organization in Southeast Asia, the region has experienced urban sprawl, intensive industrialization and booming population growth, especially in recent decades (Xu et al. 2019; Khuong et al. 2019). ASEAN is comprised of 10 Southeast Asian countries, situated in two geographical sub-regions: (i) Indochina Region (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam) and (ii) Maritime Region (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore). Anthropogenic activities in the region have posed sig
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