Use of ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry associated with artificial neural networks as an alternative for determining the water quality index.

The water quality index (WQI) is an important tool for water resource management and planning. However, it has major disadvantages: the generation of chemical waste, is costly, and time-consuming. In order to overcome these drawbacks, we propose to simplify this index determination by replacing traditional analytical methods with ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometry associated with artificial neural network (ANN).