A Snapshot of the World’s Water Quality: Towards a Global Assessment – 2016

The World Water Quality Assessment pre-study has developed a data and model-driven methodology to assess the quality of surface waters, measure progress and identify pathways towards sustainable solutions. The final report summarizes the most important results including types, intensity and sources of water pollution, potential impacts on human health and food security as well water quality data and information gaps. With the contribution of Philipp Saile from the ICWRGC, chapter 2 provides an overview of the current observational knowledge and GEMS/Water’s role as the primary source of global water quality data. Further developing and strengthening GEMS/Water and its associated online database GEMStat will support a reliable global assessment of water quality in the future.