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Call for abstracts


conference: assessing pathogen fate transport and risk in natural and engineered environment
pathogens abstract deadline extended April 20, 2012

The deadline has been extended — abstracts are due April 20, 2012.

Authors will be notified of acceptance by April 30, 2012.

Abstracts are welcome from students, academics, engineers, water professionals, water managers and decision-makers in the public, private, nongovernmental and not-for-profit sectors. Abstracts can be for either oral or poster presentation.

If you are interested in making an oral presentation at the conference, please note that only accepted abstracts of authors who have paid their registration fee by June 15, 2012 will be scheduled into the final conference program.

Oral presenters will be allowed 20 minutes in total, including time for questions from conference delegates.

Abstract submission

Please submit your abstract as an MS word attachment. Confirmation of receipt of abstracts will be sent within 72 hours.

Abstract format

submit an abstract to assessing -pathogensPlease follow the structure of the sample abstract below.

Use full justification and do not exceed 500 words. Use Times New Roman font, 12-point size and single spacing.

Your abstract title should be at the top of the page in boldface. Capitalize only the first word in the title, any abbreviations and proper nouns.

Write author names in ALL CAPS and underline the name of the presenting author. Place an asterisk next to the corresponding author and provide this person’s e-mail address. Include the institutional or organizational affiliations of all authors, as well as their addresses.

Please indicate whether you are submitting your abstract for consideration as an oral or poster presentation.

Your abstract should include the following elements —

  • Relevant conference theme (see below)
  • Research objective
  • Description of how the proposed work is unique and innovative
  • Explanation of why this work would be important to the water community

Conference themes

  1. Transport in granular media
  2. Transport in fractured media
  3. Riverbank filtration
  4. Regulatory issues
  5. Assessing groundwater under the direct influence of surface water (GWUDI/GUDI)
  6. Microbial data collection and monitoring
  7. Quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA)
  8. Engineered filtration, bioremediation, and aquifer storage and recovery (ASR)
  9. Artificial recharge

Sample abstract

Improving methods to assess GWUDI for riverbank filtration performance

G.R. DIA1, A. KRIPTO-SPORIDIAM2 *, P. ATHOGEN3, G.W. UDI4

1 Water Advice Associates, Louisville, KY, 40207
2 Carollo Engineers, Broomfield, CO, 80021
3 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 84112
4 Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 85287

a-kripto.sporidiam@carollo-engineers.com

For oral presentation

Theme: 5. Assessing groundwater under the direct influence of surface water (GWUDI/GUDI)

Research objective: The AwwaRF- and EPA-funded project entitled “Methods to assess GWUDI and bank filtration performance” was conducted from 2006 to 2008 and addressed the following challenges of the current microscopic particulate analysis (MPA) protocol and GWUDI assessment:

  1. Reevaluation of the microbial indicators used in the MPA protocol for GWUDI assessments
  2. Improvement of the current MPA protocol to increase sensitivity, and the ability to interpret results in a meaningful way
  3. Increase the ability to understand the transport of microbial colloids in bank filtration systems

Approach/innovation: This study developed a revised suite of indicators to improve the existing MPA, as well as evaluated modifications to the existing analytical protocol that greatly improved the sensitivity and specificity of the existing MPA protocol, as shown in full-scale riverbank filtration demonstration studies.

Different microbial surrogates evaluated during pilot-scale transport experiments demonstrated that bacteria-sized surrogates (e.g., E. coli) were most effective in passing through columns under all operational riverbank filtration conditions simulated. Larger-sized surrogates (e.g., algae and Cryptosporidium) were the least effective in passing through columns compared with bacteria and viruses.

Based on the results of this study, a tiered GWUDI protocol was recommended for application at riverbank filtration wells.

Importance: This process allows a source to be continually evaluated with regards to GWUDI status, and has a progressive protocol to move from initial evaluation to either a GWUDI or non-GWUDI status. This protocol is proposed as an improved GWUDI assessment tool that not only reduces monitoring costs for utilities, but also providing stronger evidence for (or against) the risk of microbial contamination in riverbank filtration systems.