posted on 2023-11-28, 19:20authored byCorinne Wiesner-Friedman, Nichole E. Brinkman, Emily Wheaton, Maitreyi Nagarkar, Chloe Hart, Scott P. Keely, Eunice Varughese, Jay Garland, Peter Klaver, Carrie Turner, John Barton, Marc Serre, Michael Jahne
Populations
contribute information about their health status to
wastewater. Characterizing how that information degrades in transit
to wastewater sampling locations (e.g., wastewater treatment plants
and pumping stations) is critical to interpret wastewater responses.
In this work, we statistically estimate the loss of information about
fecal contributions to wastewater from spatially distributed populations
at the census block group resolution. This was accomplished with a
hydrologically and hydraulically influenced spatial statistical approach
applied to crAssphage (Carjivirus communis) load measured from the influent of four wastewater treatment plants
in Hamilton County, Ohio. We find that we would expect to observe
a 90% loss of information about fecal contributions from a given census
block group over a travel time of 10.3 h. This work demonstrates that
a challenge to interpreting wastewater responses (e.g., during wastewater
surveillance) is distinguishing between a distal but large cluster
of contributions and a near but small contribution. This work demonstrates
new modeling approaches to improve measurement interpretation depending
on sewer network and wastewater characteristics (e.g., geospatial
layout, temperature variability, population distribution, and mobility).
This modeling can be integrated into standard wastewater surveillance
methods and help to optimize sewer sampling locations to ensure that
different populations (e.g., vulnerable and susceptible) are appropriately
represented.