"Smart identification system of surface water contamination by an innovative biosensor network"

The presence of some organic and inorganic contaminants in surface water is a longstanding problem in many countries. Contaminants may reach surface waters, accidentally or intentionally; via agricultural activities or from sewage discharges and they may represent a risk for human, animal and vegetable health. The recent development of ICT technologies and innovative sensors can offer novel opportunities to mitigate these risks helping the relevant authorities to discover the cause of the contamination. In particular, the availability on the market of wireless solutions to connect a large on-line sensor network, coupled with the simulation software to analyze big data in almost real-time, offer opportunities to develop early-warning systems for the protection of surface waters. In this paper, a first preliminary study to design a smart integrated system able to localize one or more emission sources of contaminant is presented. It is considered a scenario in which each biosensor is able to detect the position, magnitude, lifespan and time of the contamination source in a reach enclosed between two biosensors. A possible sensor suitable for the realization of such a smart monitoring system might be a biosensor based on a Quartz Crystal Microbalances (QCM) functionalized with antibodies through a novel immobilization technique, the Photonic Immobilization Technique (PIT). In fact, this biosensor has the high sensitivity typical of QCM coupled to the intrinsic specificity warranted by the antibodies. The biosensors based on QCMs are very cheap and, consequently, could be installed in many sections of a river thus implementing a large monitoring network.