Report No FR0241

Dec 1991

I OBJECTIVES

To describe the format and content of the WRc River Quality Archive RQA.

II REASON

A number of datasets have been collected from rivers to examine the impact of combined sewer overflow (CSO) discharges. Hitherto the data have been held on an ad-hoc basis but have now been placed in standardised format in the RQA.

The format and content of the RQA have not been reported previously.

III CONCLUSIONS

The RQA now contains 138 storm event files from four locations. Seventy four files are sufficiently comprehensive to be suitable for future analysis, and forty three have corresponding CSO spill data held on the Sewer Quality Archive (SQA). The data are currently being used in the testing of MIKE11 and are available to other parties for further analysis and model testing.

IV RECOMMENDATIONS

The River Quality Archive should be maintained to support future research needs. It should be updated with all suitable data from other sites. These data should be archived as soon as possible after they are collected. Analysis of the data should be undertaken. The lessons learnt from previous studies should be used to guide future field work.

V RESUME OF CONTENTS

Section 1 introduces the history of the data collection and identifies the uses of the RQA. Sections 2 and 3 cover the field site descriptions and data handling methods. In section 4 the quality and quantity of the data are given. Section 5 gives a brief discussion of the results and Section 6 provides the conclusions and recommendations for future usage. The Appendix contains a data request form.

Copies of the report are available from FWR, price £15.00, less 20% to FWR Members.