Optimizing the design of water quality monitoring networks by maximizing the economic value of the information.

Summary The work presented in this thesis is to combine, for the first time, the two types of literature concerning water quality monitoring networks, the literature on physical network optimization and the literature on the economic value of information for a predefined network. We seek to optimize the design of the monitoring network by maximizing the economic value of the information. We are mainly interested in the spatial aspect of the monitoring network, more precisely in the location of the monitoring stations. We call this method the economic optimization of the monitoring network. This means that the optimization of the monitoring network is not only based on physical or hydrological considerations, but also takes into account economic considerations. In this thesis, we investigate in particular the advantage of such economic optimization over traditional physical optimization.