Sustainability indicators for river water quality management in urban areas

In developed countries, the main problem of water management is the incompatibility between the average water quality, on the one hand, and the needs for ecosystem protection and the desirable water use or uses (i.e. recreation, water supply, agriculture, etc.), on the other. To achieve qualitative levels compatible with these two objectives, engineering controls are devised; such water quality criteria are often expressed by acceptable values of the parameters which represent health condition for the ecosystem. This is also taken into account in European and National legislations. These parameters could be easily linked to the concept of sustainability. Sustainable water management is a multidimensional approach to the issue of interdependency between the natural, social and economic variables that play a part in different water uses. In the analysis of sustainability of river water quality in urban areas a key point is represented by the adoption of suitable indicators. This paper suggests an integration between the outputs from river water quality models and the sustainability concept. Thus, after a presentation of five widely applied water quality models, sustainability indicators for river water quality in urban areas are discussed pointing out both their strengths and limitations. Finally, a list of suitable indicators to be applied in sustainability case-studies is proposed.