Barriers to sustainable water-quality management

Due to the pressures of increasing population and developing economy all ov er the world, the present situation of water-quality management is far from satisfactory. To enhance sustainability of water-quality-management system s, in-depth research of the related barriers and the relevant mitigation ap proaches is desired. In this paper, recent developments, advancements, chal lenges, and barriers associated with practices of water-quality management were analyzed. A number of related methodologies, applications, and policy considerations were examined. Issues of information support, technology dev elopment, system integration, and policy implementation were discussed. Per spectives of sustainable water-quality management in the twenty-first centu ry were investigated, demonstrating many demanding areas for enhanced resea rch efforts, including issues of data availability and reliability, concern s in system complexity and methodology validity limitations of computer tec hniques, usefulness of research outputs, difficulties in policy implementat ion and necessity of training programs. (C) 2001 Academic Press.