Abstract

Water is essential for the maintenance of human, animal and plant life. In many developing countries, there is a permanent degradation of freshwater resources - in terms of quantity and quality - and the aquatic ecosystems as well. The increase of pollutants in the water is increasing due to anthropogenic activities. The evaluation of the quality of a river can be carried out using indexes, which are characterized by synthesizing a large amount of information that is easy to understand and interpret. The objective of this investigation was to establish the procedure for the calculation of the SI for several indicators taking into consideration the national regulations and the environmental conditions of the country. Mathematical formulas are included to transform the concentration of 20 quality indicators to their respective sub-indices and to use the new proposed quality index. The importance of this new methodology is that it will allow the creation of new ICAs applicable to the environmental conditions of each country and adapted to its own legislation.

Keywords: Water quality; water quality index; hydric resource