Engineering Innovation in
Smart Energy & Utilities
Dispensing highly controlled drinking water: a research project to monitor the quality of water in lakes with the support of Copernicus.
Approach & Solution
Approach
Water is the elixir of life on Planet Earth, being equally fundamental for humans and ecosystems. A major global challenge nowadays is to sustain its drinking quality at sufficient quantities for the entire population. A huge investment in resources keeps the drinking water production at marginally sufficient levels in many parts of EU, as droughts, disasters and pollution events prohibit the maintenance of required quantities.
For the first time with the assistance of Copernicus - the European Union's Earth observation programme - risk prevention and mitigation activities may count on frequent near real time monitoring capacity of the natural or artificial lakes. Leveraging on the Copernicus services, WQeMS provides extensive information about water quality by building a multi-temporal and high spatial resolution monitoring framework.
For the first time with the assistance of Copernicus - the European Union's Earth observation programme - risk prevention and mitigation activities may count on frequent near real time monitoring capacity of the natural or artificial lakes. Leveraging on the Copernicus services, WQeMS provides extensive information about water quality by building a multi-temporal and high spatial resolution monitoring framework.
Solution
WQeMS aims to provide an operational Water Quality Emergency Monitoring Service to the water utilities industry in relation with the quality of the ‘water we drink’. It will focus its activities on monitoring lakes valorized by the water utilities for the delivery of drinking water, by detecting water quality changes, algal bloom events, land-water transition zone changes and extreme events (floods and oil spills). Moreover it will detect emerging events from the community.
Engineering leads the design, integration and deployment of the WQeMS platform. We are responsible for the development of the front end functionalities and for the interfaces to interact with IoT devices and external non-EO resources. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action programme under Grant Agreement No 101004157.
Engineering leads the design, integration and deployment of the WQeMS platform. We are responsible for the development of the front end functionalities and for the interfaces to interact with IoT devices and external non-EO resources. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action programme under Grant Agreement No 101004157.
Results
Innovation in the detection of substances in water
Optimization of the use of resources
New emergency working routines and standardisation
Monitoring and safety of drinking water
Risk assessment and risk management
Project value
Innovation
Enabling Technologies
IoT
Cloud
AI & Advanced Analytics
Project Team
Research & Innovation