AHP-based spatial analysis of water quality impact assessment due to change in vehicular traffic caused by highway broadening in Sikkim Himalaya

Applied Water Science, May 2018

Spatial analysis of water quality impact assessment of highway projects in mountainous areas remains largely unexplored. A methodology is presented here for Spatial Water Quality Impact Assessment (SWQIA) due to highway-broadening-induced vehicular traffic change in the East district of Sikkim. Pollution load of the highway runoff was estimated using an Average Annual Daily Traffic-Based Empirical model in combination with mass balance model to predict pollution in the rivers within the study area. Spatial interpolation and overlay analysis were used for impact mapping. Analytic Hierarchy Process-Based Water Quality Status Index was used to prepare a composite impact map. Model validation criteria, cross-validation criteria, and spatial explicit sensitivity analysis show that the SWQIA model is robust. The study shows that vehicular traffic is a significant contributor to water pollution in the study area. The model is catering specifically to impact analysis of the concerned project. It can be an aid for decision support system for the project stakeholders. The applicability of SWQIA model needs to be explored and validated in the context of a larger set of water quality parameters and project scenarios at a greater spatial scale.

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AHP-based spatial analysis of water quality impact assessment due to change in vehicular traffic caused by highway broadening in Sikkim Himalaya

Applied Water Science AHP‑based spatial analysis of water quality impact assessment due to change in vehicular traffic caused by highway broadening in Sikkim Himalaya Polash Banerjee 0 1 2 Mrinal Kanti Ghose 0 1 2 Ratika Pradhan 0 1 2 Mrinal Kanti Ghose 0 1 2 0 Department of Computer Applications, SMIT, Sikkim Manipal University , Majitar, Sikkim 737136 , India 1 Department of Computer Applications, Sikkim University , Gangtok, Sikkim 737102 , India 2 Ratika Pradhan 3 Polash Banerjee Spatial analysis of water quality impact assessment of highway projects in mountainous areas remains largely unexplored. A methodology is presented here for Spatial Water Quality Impact Assessment (SWQIA) due to highway-broadening-induced vehicular traffic change in the East district of Sikkim. Pollution load of the highway runoff was estimated using an Average Annual Daily Traffic-Based Empirical model in combination with mass balance model to predict pollution in the rivers within the study area. Spatial interpolation and overlay analysis were used for impact mapping. Analytic Hierarchy ProcessBased Water Quality Status Index was used to prepare a composite impact map. Model validation criteria, cross-validation criteria, and spatial explicit sensitivity analysis show that the SWQIA model is robust. The study shows that vehicular traffic is a significant contributor to water pollution in the study area. The model is catering specifically to impact analysis of the concerned project. It can be an aid for decision support system for the project stakeholders. The applicability of SWQIA model needs to be explored and validated in the context of a larger set of water quality parameters and project scenarios at a greater spatial scale. Analytic hierarchy process; Environmental impact assessment; Geographic information systems; Sensitivity analysis; Water pollution; Highway - Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SMIT, Sikkim Manipal University, Majitar, Sikkim 737136, India Introduction Highways are essential for the development and security of a region. However, understanding the detrimental effects of highway projects is pivotal for environmentally appropriate decision making. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) involves the assessment of impacts of a development project on the environmental attributes, including water resources (Barthwal 2012; Canter 1995) . Conventional EIA can be time consuming, expensive, and subjective (Glasson et al. 2005; Takyi 2012) . Moreover, conventional EIA focuses mainly on the temporal aspect of the impacts and undermines the importance of their spatial distribution. Geographic information systems (GIS) can overcome these limitations and provide an unbiased and easily interpretable EIA (Agrawal 2005) . A highway is essentially a non-point source of water pollution. Construction and post-construction conditions of a highway generate pollutants, which degrade the water quality and affect the habitat of the nearby water bodies (Wu et al. 1998) . Highway runoff contains relatively high concentration of pollutants as compared to the adjacent river (USEP 1996; Bingham et al. 2002; Gan et al. 2008) . Statistical models suggest that traffic volume, rainfall characteristics, highway pavement type, and properties of pollutants and seasons are important determinants of road runoff composition (Aldheimer and Bennerstedt 2003; Forsyth et al. 2006; Granato 2013; Kayhanian et al. 2003; Kim et al. 2006; Li and Barrett 2008; Pagotto et al. 2000; Tong and Chen 2002; USEP 1996; Yannopoulos et al. 2004, 2013) . These models mostly cater to highway projects of developed countries. Applicability of these models in developing countries remains largely unexplored. Depending upon the nature of the highway runoff study, traffic volume can be considered in two broad ways, namely, as average daily traffic and vehicles during storm. Average daily traffic is a good predictor of water pollutants like Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), and Zinc (Zn), while it poorly predicts the levels of lead, copper, and oil and grease (Thomson et al. 1997; Venner 2004) . In contrast, oil and grease has a significant relationship with the vehicles during storm rather than average daily traffic (Stenstrom et al. 1982; Venner 2004) . Correlation studies of river water have shown COD is strongly correlated topercent Dissolved Organic Carbon, Dissolved Oxygen, and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). Moreover, TSS is strongly associated with pH and TDS (Bhandari and Nayal 2008; Waziri and Ogugbuaja 2010) . A wide variety of water quality indices are used in the impact assessment of a highway project. However, except for Water Quality Status Index (WQSI), all other water indices involve predetermined weight or the importance of water pollutants, which cannot be manipulated to see the impact of the change in water pollutant weight on the overall impact on water quality. (Karbassi et al. 2011; M (...truncated)


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Polash Banerjee, Mrinal Kanti Ghose, Ratika Pradhan. AHP-based spatial analysis of water quality impact assessment due to change in vehicular traffic caused by highway broadening in Sikkim Himalaya, Applied Water Science, 2018, pp. 72, Volume 8, Issue 2, DOI: 10.1007/s13201-018-0699-5