Modeling the dynamics of PMMoV, a sewage-associated virus in the Seine River across Paris

Assessing the water quality of bathing waters is possible by monitoring bioindicator organisms such as microorganisms. As the most abundant biological entities in water bodies, viruses have shown potential to reflect anthropogenic contamination. In this context, this project aimed to investigate the temporal and spatial dynamics of one specific sewage-associated virus in the Seine River: the pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV). We developed a system of partial differential equations to model the transport and longitudinal evolution of viral concentrations as a function of river flow. The proposed model successfully reproduced and explained the upstream increase of PMMoV in the studied Parisian section of the Seine River and could be applied to other methods of virus enumeration, other viruses or other rivers.