IIT Madras, in collaboration with the Tel Aviv University and the KMCH-Research Foundation of Coimbatore, is launching an initiative to introduce a course on water quality to spread awareness regarding water issues, it was announced on Tuesday. The four-month course will be available in hybrid mode on the online platform NPTEL and is targeted at final-year students of science and engineering or technical people who have an interest in water quality.

It is expected that the students who participate would contribute towards a comprehensive water map of India and globally to promote water literacy. At the end, a participation certificate will be issued, which will again be part of the degree program recognized with IIT Madras.

According to Professor Thalappil Pradeep, Department of Chemistry, IITM, while stressing the importance of the course in enhancing understanding of the United Nations-mandated Sustainable Development Goals particularly the constraints preventing attainment of these goals related to poor water quality the program will arm its participants with the abilities to produce trustworthy water quality data and be better water literate, contributing to a global trained pool of water experts.

The course work shall consist of a rigorous introduction to basic concepts in water quality, field practical tests, and Surveys. It will also be built on top of a pilot survey conducted in the previous summer across different locations in Tamil Nadu, involving college students. Data collected from these efforts is used in establishing an online repository of information with spatial coordinates of water quality and survey inputs.