Integrated Modelling of Faecal Indicator Organisms (FIOs) for Prediction of Bathing Water Quality

In Europe, and in many countries around the world, there is an increasing focus on the bacterial quality of recreational bathing waters. Bathing waters are impacted by both continuous and intermittent discharges from urban and rural sources which can be a significant distance away. In order to improve the quality of bathing waters there is a need to be able to target the key sources for improvement measures. The Cloud to Coast project has collected a significant amount of data and developed models, based on the River Ribble basin in the UK, to predict time series FIO concentrations. This paper discusses the modelling of FIOs at the catchment scale and presents results from two catchments within the Ribble basin. The modelling is shown to give reasonably accurate predictions of FIO concentrations, when compared to measured data.