Lassonde prof. Khan develops new method for river health measurement

Lassonde Civil Engineering Professor Usman Khan‘s paper on Dissolved Oxygen concentration measurement methods has been published in the Journal of Environmental Informatics. The paper presents a new method to predict Dissolved Oxygen concentration, an important parameter that helps scientists gauge the health of river ecosystems.   

The paper proposes two data-driven methods, one using the Bayesian approach and one using fuzzy set theory.   These approaches allow researchers to quantify and incorporate the various sources of uncertainty and variability in the ecosystem into the model, whilst providing more accurate predictions of Dissolved Oxygen concentrations.   

The output from the model can be used to determine the risk of low Dissolved Oxygen under different conditions, and even identify the optimal rate at which we should collect water quality samples to fully characterize the river ecosystem.