A case-based reasoning tool to recommend drinking water source protection actions.

In response to a need expressed by water actors to support them in identifying appropriate actions for protecting drinking water sources, we modelled, designed, implemented, tested, and validated a prototype case-based reasoning (CBR) system. This required an intensive knowledge acquisition and structuring process which we conducted in collaboration with 102 water management and governance actors in Quebec, Canada. Knowledge was organized in a case base containing nearly 200 past experiences implementing water protection actions at different decision-making scales (local, regional, provincial), by various organizations (government, municipalities, water-related associations), over the last two decades. This paper describes our case engineering process to design case attributes based on content analysis. It presents the case edition, the case retrieval process, and the prototype's implementation and validation, conducted through a rigorous and transparent participatory procedure. This is, to our knowledge, the first successful attempt to apply a CBR approach to support water actors in protecting drinking water sources. It provides empirical evidence of the positive potential of such an approach for knowledge sharing and transfer and can be generalized to other similar contexts.

Emerging pollutants in the urban water cycle in Latin America: A review of the current literature.

Emerging pollutants (EP) are increasingly studied and characterized worldwide to improve the understanding of their environmental and toxicological impacts and their occurrence and behaviors in different environmental systems. Latin America has been subject to both environmental and toxicological impacts due to EP. To better understand these impacts, studies concerning pollutants have increased for the last ten years. The current study presents a critical review on the occurrence of different emerging pollutants in various components of the urban water cycle (UWC) in Latin America. The review is based on studies performed in 11 different countries between 1999 and 2018. The countries where the higher number of investigations were conducted are Brazil (53%) and Mexico (15%). The EP most often studied within the literature are pharmaceuticals, followed by personal care products. The most common EP reported were 17ß-estradiol, bisphenol A and estrone; The UWC component with the greatest number of measurements in the reported studies were effluents from wastewater treatment plants.