Water quality assessment and mapping for water supply system of Abbottabad's urban settlements

This study was intended to assess the qualitative aspect of the water supplied to consumer through water supply network in selective urban settlements of abbottabad city to figure out the locations prone to contamination and then mapping out the components of water supply system (wss). the overall 53 water samples were collected from various water supply components and subjected to physiochemical and bacteriological analyses. target points of wss for water sampling were positioned by using global positioning system (gps) device and water quality data visualization of every assessed sampling point was achieved by using arcview 3.1 software,a tool of geographic information system (gis). the results indicate that although the water source and storage point are at their cleaner level,the consumer end is still suffering from high magnitude of total and fecal coliform contamination. high lead and cadmium indication in almost all household tap water samples predicts the deterioration of the water supply pipelines. it is concluded that developing a database after the integration of the water quality data with the water supply infrastructure will be useful in planning improved water schemes. this approach may also help in the rehabilitation as well as improvement of older wss both in terms of quality and quantity for the community to meet the core water quality standard. copyright 2012 zoological society of pakistan.