Status of the Database On Microorganism Inactivation In Environmental Media (DIMEM).

Inactivation of pathogenic and indicator microorganisms is the essential component of their environmental fate which needs to be considered in environmental microbiology models. Existing data from a large number of inactivation experiments are dispersed across numerous publications with varying availability. The objective of this work was to compile a database where the published inactivation data were systematically presented, amenable to searches of various complexity, and accessible for applications in different models. Such database DIMEM has been developed for matrices such as water, water with organic waste, soil, soil with organic waste added, sediments, sediments with organic waste added, organic waste, plants and plant materials. Properties of environmental media and microorganisms were divided into searchable (typically available from publications) and non-searchable (often not present in publications). Flexible relational data architecture was implemented. Six types of models are available to be fitted to data using the EXCEL add-on. Search can be fine-tuned by the microorganism properties, media properties, experiment set up, and environmental parameters of inactivation (temperature, water content, irradiance), and region. The substantial part of work on DIMEM has included the data management code that allows extensive data editing. DIMEM is developed as the prospective community tool and will be distributed for beta testing.