The Challenge
Measuring the quantity of pollutants in water bodies is of paramount importance to determine water quality for human activities and especially for the environment. Water companies are at risk of fines for low water quality and for high levels of pollutants from wastewater discharges and are compensated by OfWat for meeting performance deliverables.
Companies like Anglian Water currently have to deploy physical ground sensors to monitor pollutants. This is challenging because of the geographic spread and seasonal changes in affected water bodies. Anglian Water’s @one Alliance partnership contacted Roke to develop a conceptual solution introducing intelligent digital solutions to automatically detect, categorise and quantify water pollutants.
The Approach
We developed a proof of concept for a novel application of remote sensing satellite data to detect, locate, and monitor pollution in a river and water bodies around Anglian Water’s process and discharge point, effectively localising pollutants at different points along the river, and estimating the concentrations to mg/l without the deployment of ground sensors. This innovative solution provides the extraction of valuable insight from remote satellites for a data-driven water quality monitoring system.
This novel solution is at an early stage of maturity, and at the advanced analytics stage of future developments, the team will utilise its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) expertise to generate insights and business intelligence building blocks to enable optimisations in water quality monitoring. This work will lessen the need for physical interventions and critically, reduce Anglian Water’s carbon footprint when monitoring the wastewater network in line with industry decarbonisation objectives.
THE OUTCOME
We provided a dashboard that utilises satellite image for condition monitoring of energy and utilities infrastructure and the environment. The system uses remote sensor data to detect, categorise and quantify anomalous conditions such as excessive levels of phosphorus and nitrogen over water bodies because of wastewater processes and other activities.
Benefits include:
- Early warning detection of pollution from sewage process
- Reduced reaction time to investigate water quality issues
- Increased water quality monitoring capability
- Reduced likelihood of fines due to non-performance of ODI
- The option to implement the system as a standalone condition monitoring platform or integrated to a customers’ existing platform
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