When groundwater extraction is important for a production process or when there's a potential threat for a property nearby, it is interesting to carry out additional measurements. Water flux and mass flux measurements can then be a useful tool to determine how much mass is flowing towards an object and at what speed.
Monitoring the integrity of processes and properties is important for the continuity of these processes.
Waiting until a pollution threshold is exceeded is often costly and slows down processes.
Measuring mass fluxes and water fluxes then helps in predicting threats to integrity and enables you to intervene at the right time.
Integrity measurements often precede the exceeding of thresholds or the measurement of standard contaminants. Typical cases in which this is relevant are receptors where the quality of the groundwater is of great importance. The susceptibility to contamination is then high (e.g. groundwater extraction). Integrity measurements are also used in situations where less common contamination is of interest (pesticieds, medicines, ...).
Information is initially collected from an operational perspective. To determine where, how much and when pollution can become significant for the operational processes.
This may involve water extraction as input for the processes. If it is in danger of being polluted, the measurements will map this out. But you can also monitor waste discharges from the processes that can pose a threat to the environment in order to take appropriate measures.
In other cases, the principle of due diligence may be applied. When you want to check whether you threat to violate certain codes, laws, rules or principles. And if so, when this wil happen.
For example, the mass flux may be relevant in determining how much pollution flows through groundwater to a surface water. This type of environmental impact of surface water is then covered by the European Water Directive.