Today, water quality control often relies on methods that take several days to deliver results….
Isabel Erb
PhD student
Isabel is an industrial PhD student at Sweden Water Research and first became involved in the Urban Bathing project in 2021, which at the time formed part of her master’s thesis. Since then, she has continued her work as an industrial PhD student from autumn 2022 onwards.
She works on several projects related to water quality. In the Urban Bathing project, she investigates why and under what conditions poor bathing water quality occurs, as well as whether the currently time-consuming process of manual sampling and analysis of bathing water quality can be accelerated.
In the long term, the knowledge generated on bathing water quality can also be applied to other types of water and used in a broader context. Isabel explored this potential when, in spring 2025, she undertook a research exchange in Iceland. Together with Veitur (Reykjavik’s utility company for electricity, heating, water and wastewater), she worked on a project where she applied machine learning algorithms to online flow cytometry data to gather information on anomaly detection, seasonal variations, biostability and the impact of weather parameters on microbial drinking water quality.
