Multi-indicator assessment of water environment in government environmental auditing

Abstract

This study focused on a multi-indicator assessment methodology for governmental environmental auditing of water protection programs. The environmental status of Wuli Lake in China was assessed using the global indicators (driver-status-response) developed by the Commission on Sustainable Development, and four additional indicators proposed by the author: water quality, pollution load, aquatic ecosystem status, and lake sediment deposition. Various hydrological, chemical, biological and environmental parameters were used to estimate the values of the indicators for assessment of environmental status of the lake based on time series data sets for twenty years. The indicators proposed can be customized to meeting the needs for particular assessment of water protection programs. This method can be used to evaluate the performance of national environmental protection programs and provide technical support for environmental auditors.

Evaluation of the water quality in the Guadarrama river at the section of Las Rozas‐Madrid, Spain

“…The evaluation of water quality in different countries has become a critical issue in recent years due to the population increase and the growing demand for water (Prati et al 1971; Mummé 1979; Bhargava 1985; Poch et al 1986; Pesce & Wunderlin 2000; Chang et al 2001; Cox 2003; Lopes et al 2004; Zheng et al 2004; Bellos & Sawidis 2005; Liu et al 2005; Kowalkowski et al 2006; Ocampo‐Duque et al 2006; Ouyang et al 2006; Absalon & Matysik 2007; Beamonte et al 2007; Even et al 2007; He et al 2007; Icaga 2007; Kachiashvili et al 2007; Lindenschmidt et al 2007; Naddeo et al 2007; Paliwal et al 2007; Sánchez et al 2007). These authors have used different methods to facilitate the evaluation and classification of the quality of natural waters based on numerous parameters and to determine the influence of pollutants on the quality of river water.…”

“…The determination of WQI requires a normalization step where each parameter is transformed into a 0–100 scale, where 100 represents the maximum quality. The next step is to apply a weighting factor in accordance with the importance of the parameter (Bhargava 1985; Nives 1999; Pesce & Wunderlin 2000; Chang et al 2001; Ocampo‐Duque et al 2006; He et al 2007; Sánchez et al 2007). The dissolved oxygen (DO) and dissolved oxygen deficit ( D ) have been used in a number of cases to evaluate the water quality of different reservoirs and streams.…”

Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Environmental Quality with Improved Grey Clustering Method: A Case Study of Soil Heavy Metals Pollution*

“…The three types of whitening functions defined in Section C are used to establish whitening functions for each monitoring index based on grades of envrionmental quality standards. Whitening weight function of the jth monitoring index to the first grade is Equation (9), that of the jth monitoring index to the kth grade (k=2,3, …, n-1) is Equation (10), and that of the jth monitoring index to the last grade is Equation (11).…”

“…However, there are fewer studies in this area. For other aspects environmental quality assessment, fuzzy comprehensive analysis [9], [10] , multi-indicator assessment [11] , grey theory [12], [13] and multivariate statistical analysis [14], [15] are the commonly used methods. In these commonly used methods, grey theory methods have got more and more attention because of its novelty and ease of operation.…”

Assessing the environmental management efficiency of manufacturing sectors: evidence from emerging economies

“…Hermann et al (2007) presented a new analytical tool called COMPLIMENT, which provides detailed information on a business's overall environmental sustainability and can integrate tools such as life cycle assessment, multi-criteria analysis, and environmental performance indicators. He et al (2007) carried out a multi-indicator assessment on government auditing of water protection programmes to evaluate the performance of national environmental protection programmes and provide technical support for environmental auditors. Similarly, Fang et al (2011) provided a risk management methodology aimed at process control for land settlement in China.…”