Water Quality Management

Start next run: October 2010
Duration: 18 Months
Location: UNESCO-IHE, Delft, the Netherlands

Specialisation within of Water Management Programme (for the description of the specialisation within the Environmental Science Programme click here)

Water Quality Management

Water Quality Management studies the water quality impacts of human activities on aquatic ecosystems, and presents remedial actions as well as legal and institutional arrangements for sound management of the different uses.

Participant Profile

The Water Quality Management specialisation aims at engineers and scientists responsible for or involved in planning, developing and implementation of water quality policies, strategies and programmes. For the Water Quality Management specialisation affinity with chemistry and biology is required.

Learning objectives

After completing this specialisation, graduates will be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the physical, chemical and biological processes of the environment and identify the impacts of human activities on aquatic ecosystems
• Name and explain principles, concepts and instruments of main national and international water and environmental legislation and common and desired institutional and management arrangements
• Interpret, design and optimise water quality monitoring and assessment schemes in the watershed
• Apply experimental, statistical and modelling tools for interpreting and designing water quality management programmes
• Critically analyse and evaluate alternative water quality management programmes

Course contents

The Water Quality Management specialisation offers six modules allowing the participants to broaden and deepen their understanding of specific management issues. Participants learn to apply some essential tools for managing water quality.

• Water Quality Assessment addresses common and critical water pollution factors, including indicators, sources, causes and effects. This topic demonstrates and applies appropriate monitoring, modelling and risk assessment in case study and simulated settings.
• Environmental Planning and Implementation enables participants to apply sustainable development concepts to policy analysis, using environmental impact assessment and natural resource valuation.
• Water & Environmental Law helps participants to understand the need for water and environmental legislation, and to become familiar with the most appropriate institutional and management arrangements for integrated water resources management.
• Aquatic Ecosystems is a module that enables participants to tackle environmental problems related to freshwater ecosystems. This immerses participants in practical field measurements of a small catchment area, and combines this with laboratory experiments on samples they take during the field work and on GIS and computer modelling.

Participants can choose two of the following modules:

• Wetlands for Water Quality
• Environmental Engineering

• Watershed and River Basin Management
• Public-Private Partnership (PPP)

The list below shows all course modules of the specialisation within the framework of the International Master Programme in Water Management (participants can choose between modules that have the same module-number). This is followed by a six month research and thesis phase. In total, the programme covers a period of 18 months and graduates will be awarded 106 ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) credits.