The Ministry of Environmental Protection Has Released the ''Technical Specifications for Automatic Monitoring of Surface Water (Trial)''

Recently, the Ministry of Environmental Protection issued the "Technical Specification for Automatic Monitoring of Surface Water (Trial)" (HJ 915-2017), the first such standard to be released.

Currently, my country lacks technical specifications for automatic monitoring of surface water quality, making the need for such specifications extremely urgent given the current state of surface water monitoring in the country.

On the one hand, my country's surface water monitoring will gradually establish a monitoring model based primarily on automatic monitoring, supplemented by manual monitoring; on the other hand, with the rapid development of automatic monitoring technology, automatic monitoring instruments have shifted from being entirely imported to being assembled from imported parts, with core components also imported, and even achieving complete domestic production of some instruments. The number of monitoring items has also increased from the original 7 to the 24 items specified in Table 1 of the "Surface Water Environmental Quality Standard" (GB 3838-2002). However, currently, there are only technical requirements for individual monitoring instruments, such as more than ten instrument standards for permanganate index, ammonia nitrogen, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, and heavy metals.

The *Technical Specification for Automatic Monitoring of Surface Water (Trial)* (HJ 915-2017) mainly covers four aspects: construction, acceptance, operation and maintenance, and quality assurance and control of automatic surface water monitoring systems.

First, it proposes for the first time the construction requirements for systems using various methods, including fixed stations, simple stations, small stations, fixed platform stations on water, and buoy (boat) stations, providing a reference for the construction of various types of water stations in the future.

Second, it clarifies the basic procedures and requirements for acceptance, mainly addressing the acceptance of station buildings and external support facilities, instrument and equipment acceptance, data transmission and data platform acceptance, and acceptance reports. It also formulates the *Technical Requirements for Acceptance of Automatic Surface Water Quality Monitoring Systems*, providing technical guidance for the specific implementation of water station acceptance work at the national and local levels. Third, the standard proposes comprehensive quality control covering the entire process, including water sampling, pretreatment, distribution, automatic analysis, data acquisition, and transmission. Building upon existing quality control measures such as periodic checks for accuracy, precision, detection limits, zero-point drift, and range drift, it introduces for the first time spike recovery and standard curve checks to further ensure the reliability of monitoring results.

Fourth, the quality of operation and maintenance directly impacts the quality of automatic water quality monitoring data. The standard clearly stipulates requirements for routine maintenance, repair, troubleshooting, downtime maintenance, reagent preparation, and daily management and recording of the data platform. It mandates thorough recording of all instrument performance checks, inspections, spare parts replacements, calibrations, repairs, reagent preparation, and daily data platform operations to ensure complete, comprehensive, and accurate records.