Predicting water contamination by statistical models is a useful tool to manage health risk in recreational beaches. Extreme contamination events, i.e. those exceeding normative are generally rare with respect to bathing conditions and thus the data is said to be imbalanced. Modeling and predicting those rare events present unique challenges. Here we introduce and evaluate several machine learning

Creating water sensitive cities is a stated goal of Australia's National Water Initiative; however, most Australian cities have made only limited progress toward this goal. This paper summarises an in-depth collaborative research project that sought to understand what is holding back investment in water sensitive cities and identify a road map to address the constraints. The project involved research

Individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may shed the virus in stool before developing symptoms, suggesting that measurements of SARS-CoV-2 concentrations in wastewater could be a “leading indicator” of COVID-19 prevalence. Multiple studies have corroborated the leading indicator concept by showing that the correlation between wastewater measurements and COVID-19 case counts

The anaerobic digestion microbiome has been puzzling us since the dawn of molecular methods for mixed microbial community analysis. Monitoring of the anaerobic digestion microbiome can either take place via a non-targeted holistic evaluation of the microbial community through fingerprinting or by targeted monitoring of selected taxa. Here, we compared four different microbial community fingerprinting

High water turbidity in aquatic ecosystems is a global challenge due to its harmful impacts. A cost-effective manner to rapidly and accurately measure water turbidity is thus of particular useful in water management with limited resources. This study developed a novel framework aiming to predict water turbidity in various aquatic ecosystems. The framework predicted water turbidity and quantified the

Contamination of fluoroquinolones (FQs) are of emerging concerns because of their adverse effects on environment and humans. This study investigated the ecotoxicological effects, biodegradation, and multiple metabolic pathways of a frequently found FQ, enrofloxacin (ENR) by ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.). Key metabolic genes for driving the metabolism of ENR have been identified using transcriptome profiling

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has emerged as a useful tool in the fight to track and contain COVID-19 spread within communities. One of the motives behind COVID-19 WBE efforts is the potential for ‘early warning’ of either the onset of disease in a new setting or changes in trends in communities where disease is endemic. Many initial reports of the early warning potential of WBE have relied upon

Bromine (Br) and iodine (I) in source water can form highly toxic brominated or iodinated disinfection byproducts in treatment plants. For the first time, the occurrence of Br and I speciation and their proportion, transformation in the drinking water supply system along the Changjiang River were investigated. 96 water samples were collected from eight drinking water treatment plants under conditions