Beach Water Quality Forecast System launched to provide easy-to-read water quality forecasts

The Environmental Protection Department (EPD) announced the launch of the Beach Water Quality Forecast System on Monday, which will provide the most up-to-date water quality data every morning for beaches in Hong Kong that are open for swimming.

Members of the public can obtain the latest water quality forecast information for all beaches through the Beach Water Quality Forecast mobile application or the dedicated beach water quality forecast page on the EPD's beach thematic website.

To allow residents to understand the results more easily, the index system will follow the current rating system for beach water quality, with 1 being Good and 4 being Very Poor. 

If the forecasted grade is 4, swimmers are recommended to avoid entering the water.

The spokesman stated that to match Hong Kong's vision to become a smart city, EPD and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology collaborated on a project to create a statistical model that will take into account the most relevant and latest environmental and hydrometeorological parameters that could estimate the daily E. coli level in beach waters, which were then converted into the Beach Water Quality Forecast Index for the ease of the public.