Water Quality Indices

This book covers water quality indices (WQI) in depth – it describes what purpose they serve, how they are generated, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how to make the best use of them. It is a concise and unique guide to WQIs for chemists, chemical/environmental engineers and government officials. Whereas it is easy to express the quantity of water, it is very difficult to express its quality because a large number of variables determine the water quality. WQIs seek to resolve the difficulty by translating a set of a large number of variables to a one-digit or a two-digit numeral. They are essential in communicating the status of different water resources in terms of water quality and the impact of various factors on it to policy makers, service personnel, and the lay public. Further they are exceedingly useful in the monitoring and management of water quality. With the importance of water and water quality increasing exponentially, the importance of this topic is also set to increase enormously because only with the use of indices is it possible to assess, express, communicate, and monitor the overall quality of any water source.

Tabassum Abbasi is Assistant Professor at Pondicherry University, India. She received her Masters from the University of Surrey and her PhD in 2010 from the Anna University of Technology, India, both in Chemical and Environmental Engineering. She also held a concurrent position of Visiting Associate Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA during 2012-2017. Dr. Abbasi was awarded India’s Best Young Engineer Award in 2014, has published over 100 papers with 3500+ citations and authored 10 books. S. A. Abbasi has been a full university professor since 1987 after being Head-in-charge of the Water Quality & Environment Division at the Centre for Water Resources, Kozhikode, during 1979-87. He was a Visiting-cum-adjunct Professor at California State University during 1984-1987, and has been a Visiting Professor at the universities of Minnesota, Florida, Las Vegas, California-Berkeley, Malaya and Al-Ahsa. With 43 books, over 300 papers in indexed journals, 8 patents and 9000+ citations, Prof Abbasi is among the world’s foremost environmental experts. Among numerous coveted honours and awards received by him are the National Design Award in Environmental Engineering, the National Hydrology Award, the International Desalination Association’s prize, and fellowships of the National Academy of Sciences and the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers. He has been Member, Board of Governors, IIT Roorkee, Member of the BHU Court, and has been Chairman/Member of numerous high-level committees of MNES, DST, MoWR, AlCTE, and the UGC.