ABSTRACT
Having access to safe drinking water is a basic human right and essential to our health. The emergence of automated fecal monitoring systems for water started in the mid 90s and during the past 20 years, several systems have been introduced in the market. Fully automated water analysis enables increased test frequency and generates additional quality data to present a better overview of variations and pollution episodes. This would be beneficial for many waterworks as the traditional manual sampling and lab analysis results are limited to a few samples a month. The enumeration of indicator bacteria in water by the use of specific enzyme activities without bacterial growth has been available for years. The different detection formats are based on both bacterial growth, in combination with bacterial enzyme activity, and rapid non-growth detection using only sensitive measurements of the initial activity.
