The Project on “Identification of Receiving Water Body Based Discharge Limits – Application to Küçük Menderes River Basin” funded by TUBITAK was inaugurated with an opening ceremony on the 23rd November 2018 at Tepekule Convention and Exhibition Center in İzmir.
The Project aims to identify discharge limits for receiving water bodies through a synthesis of the approaches adopted by the European Union with the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) (WFD) and by the United States (US) for setting surface water discharge standards, and to provide a solution-oriented approach based on modelling and optimization which is applicable to river basins in Turkey. The project is conducted by TUBITAK Marmara Research Center’s Environment and Cleaner Production Institute (ECPI). The project partners are İzmir Dokuz Eylül University (DEU) and Denizli Pamukkale University (PAU). The project duration is 30 months.
The opening ceremony was attended by the relevant stakeholders of the project like representatives from state agencies, İzmir Metropolitan Municipality, industrial entities and universities.
The opening speech was made by the Project Manager Dr. Selma AYAZ; which was followed by an introductive presentation on the project methods by the Senior Researcher Dr. Mehmet DİLAVER from TUBITAK MAM Environment and Cleaner Production Institute. Then, the DEU group coordinator and the faculty member of DEU Environmental Engineering Department Prof. Alper ELÇİ made a presentation on the “Determination of Water Quality in the River Küçük Menderes by Mathematical Modelling” and briefed the participants on how to simulate precipitation, flow and transportation processes by mathematical modelling. Afterwards, the PAU group coordinator and the faculty member of PAU Civil Engineering Department Prof. Mustafa Tamer AYVAZ gave a presentation on the “Determination of Receiving Water Body Based Discharge Standards with Simulation-Optimization Models”.
The final part of the meeting was devoted to a session for exchange of views among the participants and the project staff; and it was concluded that it would be quite useful to develop a modelling and optimization based approach for the control of hazardous pollutants at basin scale.