Optimal redesign of environmental monitoring networks by using software MSANOS

Redesign of environmental monitoring networks is a field rich in practical applications, mainly in the light of recent EU environmental directives. In the present work, an optimisation software application has been applied to reduce the size of an existing monitoring network affecting in minimal fashion its descriptive capability and making its maintenance costs more sustainable at the same time. The optimal reduction of a long-term monitoring network is a balance issue. In fact, redundancies among monitoring sites often load the manager with costs providing a negligible contribution in the decision-making processes. However, on the other hand, discarding erroneously monitoring sites could reduce the representativeness of the monitored system and, consequently, distort its informative framework. To avoid such risk, downstream of the optimisation stage, a retrospective analysis should be carried out in order to verify the correctness of the decision about the number and the locations of sites to be discarded. A case study is presented that focuses on the optimisation of a groundwater monitoring network located in the southern part of Italy. The investigated case is of particular interest for the criticality of the considered resource and for the recognised importance of the groundwater monitoring in the Water Framework Directive.