Iles, J.A., Cartwright, P., Johns, J., and Waltham, N.J. (2023) Quality control procedure for marine water quality logger data. Report. TropWATER, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia.

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Abstract

This report outlines the quality control process we apply to data collected from loggers in our marine water quality monitoring programs. Data goes through both automated and manual quality control steps. There are twelve quality control tests in the automated step followed by semi-formal manual quality control by a trained operator. A flagging system is used to communicate the results of quality control tests to the end user with flag values assigned to each sensor value. The flagging system assigns values from 1 to 99, with the end user most commonly seeing flag values of 1 (good data), 2 (probably good data), 3 (probably bad data), 4 (bad data), or 9 (missing data).

The end user can then decide what level of data ‘quality’ they wish to use for their application, and unwanted data can easily be masked in MS Excel or other data management programs by filtering by ‘QC flag’. For most applications we suggest ‘good data’ and ‘probably good data’ is acceptable, ‘probably bad data’ may be used with caveats, and ‘bad data’ should be discarded. Retaining all data ‘as is’ along with its QC flags through to the end user maintains data integrity.

Item ID:	80801
Item Type:	Report (Report)
Keywords:	QAQC, marine water quality, logger data
Copyright Information:	© James Cook University, 2023.
Date Deposited:	23 Nov 2023 00:39
FoR Codes:	41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4199 Other environmental sciences > 419999 Other environmental sciences not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1899 Other environmental management > 189999 Other environmental management not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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