Assessment of Water Quality of Rawal Lake and its Tributaries and Forecasting the Pollution Risk Assessment

Abstract

Water is a necessary resource for life to continue living on Earth, and in the current environment, finding clean, safe drinking water has become a major and daunting challenge. The Rawal Dam is a major supply of drinking water for Pakistan's twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Natural freshwater from various streams and rivers supplies Rawal dam. A few significant tributaries of the Rawal dam are the Korang River, the Nurpur and Shahdara streams, the Jinnah stream, and the Filtration Plant, among others. These streams in Islamabad, Pakistan, are constantly being contaminated by anthropogenic activity due to their proximity to residential and industrial areas. The intrusion of waste into these freshwater bodies is seriously compromising the water quality, endangering the health of those who live in the vicinity to them. The current study focuses on forecasting the pollution and assessment of the water quality of Rawal Dam and its tributaries. Physiochemical testing, microbiological analysis, molecular analysis (DNA extraction and qPCR analysis), and heavy metal analysis have all been used to determine the water quality of the chosen sites. Deep learning models (LSTM, GRU, Bi-LSTM, and Bi-GRU) are used for pollution forecasting prediction. This study will contribute significantly to forecasting the pollution load inside the water bodies, identifying, and quantifying infamous pathogens like Salmonella, Shigella, and E. Coli, and Campylobacter.