Data Mining to Identify Attributes Associated with Drinking Water Advisories in First Nations Communities
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 145, Issue 11
Abstract
Maintaining acceptable drinking water quality in First Nations communities has been an ongoing issue in Canada, resulting in frequent drinking water advisories (DWAs). Information about drinking water systems on reserves was combined with historical advisory data to investigate the relationships between system attributes and DWAs using data mining. Decision trees were developed to identify key factors linked to the occurrence, frequency, duration, and causes of DWAs. The results showed that trends varied considerably by province, despite federal management. Operator treatment certification was shown to be associated with the duration of advisories, where systems with fully trained operators were less likely to have long-lasting DWAs. The findings from data mining can be useful for informing future regulatory and funding decisions in efforts to reduce DWAs.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Data Availability Statement
All models generated during the study appear in the article’s Supplemental Data section. All data used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This research was made possible by funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Res’Eau National Centre of Excellence on small drinking water systems.
References
AANDC (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada). 2015. “First Nation profiles.” Accessed May 20, 2016. http://pse5-esd5.ainc-inac.gc.ca/fnp/Main/Search/SearchFN.aspx?lang=eng.
Babovic, V., J. P. Drecourt, M. Keijzer, and P. F. Hansen. 2002. “A data mining approach to modelling of water supply assets.” Urban Water 4 (4): 401–414. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1462-0758(02)00034-1.
Blockeel, H., S. Džeroski, and J. Grbović. 1999. “Simultaneous prediction of multiple chemical parameters of river water quality with TILDE.” In Principles of data mining and knowledge discovery, 32–40. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
Dreiseitl, S., and L. Ohno-Machado. 2002. “Logistic regression and artificial neural network classification models: A methodology review.” J. Biomed. Inf. 35 (5–6): 352–359. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1532-0464(03)00034-0.
Dyck, T., R. Plummer, and D. Armitage. 2015. “Examining First Nations’ approach to protecting water resources using a multi-barrier approach to safe drinking water in Southern Ontario, Canada.” Can. Water Resour. J./Revue Canadienne Des Ressources Hydriques 40 (2): 204–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/07011784.2015.1033759.
Edwards, J. E., S. B. Henderson, S. Struck, and T. Kosatsky. 2012. “Characteristics of small residential and commercial water systems that influence their likelihood of being on drinking water advisories in rural British Columbia, Canada: A cross-sectional study using administrative data.” J. Water Health 10 (4): 629–649. https://doi.org/10.2166/wh.2012.046.
Fawcett, T. 2006. “An introduction to ROC analysis.” Patt. Recognit. Lett. 27 (8): 861–874. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2005.10.010.
Galway, L. P. 2016. “Boiling over: A descriptive analysis of drinking water advisories in First Nations communities in Ontario, Canada.” Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 13 (5): 505. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph13050505.
Government of Canada. 2016. “Budget 2016: Chapter 3—A better future for indigenous peoples.” Accessed June 20, 2016. http://www.budget.gc.ca/2016/docs/plan/ch3-en.html#Toc446175985.
Government of Canada. 2018. “About drinking water advisories.” Accessed January 22, 2019. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1538160229321/1538160276874.
Government of Canada. 2019. “Ending long-term drinking water advisories.” Accessed January 22, 2019. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1506514143353/1533317130660.
Harvey, R., and E. McBean. 2015. “A data mining tool for planning sanitary sewer condition inspection.” Chap. 10 in Conflict resolution in water resources and environmental management, 181–199. New York: Springer.
Harvey, R., H. M. Murphy, E. A. McBean, and B. Gharabaghi. 2015. “Using data mining to understand drinking water advisories in small water systems: A case study of Ontario First Nations drinking water supplies.” Water Resour. Manage. 29 (14): 5129–5139. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-015-1108-6.
Hill, C., K. Furlong, K. Bakker, and A. Cohen. 2008. “Harmonization versus subsidiarity in water governance: A review of water governance and legislation in the Canadian provinces and territories.” Can. Water Resour. J./Revue Canadienne Des Ressources Hydriques 33 (4): 315–332. https://doi.org/10.4296/cwrj3304315.
Hosmer, D. W., and S. Lemeshow. 2000. Applied logistic regression. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley.
INAC (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada). 2000. “Band classification manual.” Accessed October 4, 2017. http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/R22-1-2000E.pdf.
Kantardzic, M. 2011. Data mining, 1–25. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Kaur, J. 2017. “Overview of artificial neural networks and its applications.” Accessed May 17, 2017. https://www.xenonstack.com/blog/overview-of-artificial-neural-networks-and-its-applications.
Landis, J. R., and G. G. Koch. 1977. “The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data.” Biometrics 33 (1): 159–174. https://doi.org/10.2307/2529310.
Larose, D. T. 2014. Discovering knowledge in data. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Levasseur, J., and J. Marcoux. 2015. “Water advisories chronic reality in many First Nations communities.” Accessed October 4, 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/bad-water-third-world-conditions-on-first-nations-in-canada-1.3269500.
Morrison, A., L. Bradford, and L. Bharadwaj. 2015. “Quantifiable progress of the First Nations water management strategy, 2001–2013: Ready for regulation?” Can. Water Resour. J./Revue Canadienne Des Ressources Hydriques 40 (4): 352–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/07011784.2015.1080124.
Murphy, H. M., M. Bhatti, R. Harvey, and E. A. McBean. 2016. “Using decision trees to predict drinking water advisories in small water systems.” J. Am. Water Works Assoc. 108 (2): E109–E117. https://doi.org/10.5942/jawwa.2016.108.0008.
Murphy, H. M., E. Corston-Pine, Y. Post, and E. A. McBean. 2015. “Insights and opportunities: Challenges of Canadian First Nations drinking water operators.” Int. Indigenous Policy J. 6 (3): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2015.6.3.7.
Myles, A. J., R. N. Feudale, Y. Liu, N. A. Woody, and S. D. Brown. 2004. “An introduction to decision tree modelling.” J. Chemom. 18 (6): 275–285. https://doi.org/10.1002/cem.873.
Neegan Burnside. 2011. “National Assessment of First Nations Water and Wastewater Systems–National Roll-Up Report.” Accessed October 1, 2017. https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1313770257504/1313770328745.
North, M. 2012. Data mining for the masses. Athens, Greece: A Global Text Project Book.
Patrick, R. J. 2011. “Uneven access to safe drinking water for First Nations in Canada: Connecting health and place through source water protection.” Health Place 17 (1): 386–389. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2010.10.005.
Pons, W., S. A. McEwen, K. Pintar, A. Jones-Bitton, I. Young, and A. Papadopoulos. 2014. “Experience, training and confidence among small, non-community drinking water system operators in Ontario, Canada.” J. Water Health 12 (4): 782–790. https://doi.org/10.2166/wh.2014.163.
Post, Y. L., E. McBean, and B. Gharabaghi. 2018. “Using probabilistic neural networks to analyze First Nations’ drinking water advisory data.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage. 144 (11): 05018015. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000988.
RapidMiner GmbH. 2016. “Decision tree—RapidMiner documentation.” Accessed June 24, 2016. http://docs.rapidminer.com/studio/operators/modeling/predictive/trees/parallel_decision_tree.html.
Simeone, T., and S. Troniak. 2012. Bill S-8: The Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act: 41-1-S8-E. Ottawa: Library of Parliament.
Swain, H., S. Louttit, and S. Hrudey. 2006. Report of the expert panel on safe drinking water for First Nations (Volume 1). Ottawa: Indian Affairs and Northern Affairs Canada.
Thompson, E., Y. Post, and E. McBean. 2017. “A decade of drinking water advisories: Historical evidence of frequency, duration and causes.” Can. Water Resour. J. 42 (4): 378–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/07011784.2017.1387609.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 145 • Issue 11 • November 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 16, 2017
Accepted: Mar 21, 2019
Published online: Sep 6, 2019
Published in print: Nov 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Feb 6, 2020
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.