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Water quality is an essential component of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically highlighted in SDG 6, which focuses on „Ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.“ While the title may suggest a primary emphasis on drinking water and sanitation, SDG 6 encompasses a much broader scope, including the preservation of aquatic ecosystems and the maintenance of ambient water quality.Maintaining and restoring good ambient water quality is essential for the integrity of aquatic ecosystems on the one hand, while on the other hand aquatic ecosystems provide services to society such as natural purification of water and the storage of freshwater in the landscape. But water quality hazards are present all over the world: Increasing pollution of freshwater as a result of rapid economic growth and urbanization in developing countries, and sustained, chronic pollution including long-term legacies in developed countries.In 2019 a report entitled „Quality unknown“ by the Worldbank concluded that the water quality status is largely invisible and unknown because of the lack of information on water quality.In the 2021 progress update on SDG 6.3.2, water quality could not be assessed for about three billion people due the lack of water quality data. It is obvious that there is a need to improve water quality information.The GlobeWQ project was designed to address the global challenge of improving water quality information. It was conducted from October 1st, 2019 to December 31st, 2022 funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).At a global scale, GlobeWQ has further developed and applied the WorldQual water quality model, providing information on concentration of fecal coliform bacteria, biological oxygen demand and total dissolved solids for rivers worldwide. A data-driven approach was applied to estimate global nitrate concentrations.In addition to global information products, GlobeWQ has also developed

The aim of this study is the analysis of trend in the trophic level evolution in clear deep lakes which, being characterised by good quality state, are important socio-economic resources for their regions. The selected lakes are situated in Europe (Garda, Maggiore, Constance and Vättern), North America (Michigan) and Africa (Malawi and Tanganyika) and cover a range of eco-regions (continental, perialpine, boreal, rift valley) distributed globally. To evaluate trophic level tendency we mainly focused on chlorophyll-A concentrations (chl-a) which is a direct proxy of trophic status. The chl-A concentrations were obtained from 5216 cloud-free MERIS imagery from 2002 to 2012. The 'GLaSS RoIStats tool' available within the GLaSS project was used to extract chl-A in a number of region of interests (ROI) located in pelagic waters as well as some few other stations depending on lakes morphology. For producing the time-series trend, these extracted data were analysed with the Seasonal Kendall test. The results overall show almost stable conditions with a slight increase in concentration for lakes Maggiore, Constance, and the Green Bay of Lake Michigan; a slight decrease for lakes Garda and Tanganyika and absolutely stable conditions for lakes Vättern and Malawi. The results presented in this work show the great capability of MERIS to perform trend tests analysis on trophic status with focus on chl-A concentration. Being chl-A also a key parameter in water quality monitoring plans, this study also supports the managing practices implemented worldwide for using the water of the lakes.

This paper describes the implementation of a large community-based HIV/AIDS behavioural intervention in rural Uganda and presents 4 years' worth of quantitative process data. The intervention involved 560 field-based workers (57% male, 76% subsistence farmers, mean age 35 years), supervised by six central staff. Intervention channels included drama and video shows, Community Educators (CEs), as well as leaflet and condom distribution. Activities focused on one or more of 16 key topics. In total, 392 000 attendances (51% female) were recorded--a mean of over 6 for each of the 64 000 target adults--at 81 000 activities, with CEs attracting 71% of the total attendance; 164 000 leaflets and 242 000 condoms were also distributed. The annual cost of the intervention per target individual was approximately US$1.76. Our voluntary workforce experienced an annual attrition rate of 11%, with 'stable' workers more likely to be older, married or opinion leaders in their community than those who dropped out. We calculate that even a significant increase in the proportion of female field workers would have made little difference either to the sex ratio of attendees or to overall attendance. In spite of some initial resistance to the intervention, particularly in relation to condoms, we have demonstrated that people in rural Africa can accept and actively participate in the dissemination of HIV/AIDS prevention messages throughout their own communities.

A comparison of the key features of eight well known real time programming languages in relation to their use for industrial computer systems. (Author)