Water quality assessment is an important activity for controlling harmful crisis in aquaculture systems.
The objective of our study was to develop a new Water Quality Index focused on monitoring of shrimp
farms; detecting poor water quality and preventing negative effects in the ecosystem. Usually, several
water quality parameters are monitored and measured in a shrimp farm during a farming period. Those
parameters are classified according to their negative effects in the ecosystem and their respective allowed
limits are also defined. The proposed Water Quality Index assigns a priority levelto each water parameter
through a new analytical hierarchical process (AHP), which allows an accurate assessment of the water
quality. Our proposed index was applied to assess the water quality condition in extensive shrimp farms
in Mexico. A comparison between our approach and those proposed in the literature shows its good
performance when real environments are assessed.