Northumbrian Water launches drones to up river water quality

Northumbrian Water has carried out the maiden test flight of a drone designed to improve the quality of the North East’s rivers and coastal waters.

The project – a partnership between Northumbrian and cloud data experts, Makutu and Skyports Drone Services –  is, according to the water company, a “world-first for the utilities industry”  in exploring the use of drone technology to carry out large-scale, real-time water quality assessments.

The test flights followed months of research into how the drones, will use sensors, artificial intelligence and data analytics to carry out a huge water quality monitoring programme of key coastal and inland locations.

Named Project Kingfisher,  the project has explored how and what data the drones will collect, to help Northumbrian Water to respond quickly to any potential issues. Currently, the company can only survey water quality by sending its people to take water samples from sites, which can prove difficult in remote rural areas, or during bad weather.

The Kingfisher tests will involve launching the drone to visit several pre-programmed water sampling sites. There it will hover while it conducts water quality tests. The data it has collected will be fed back into Northumbrian Water for analysis in near real-time.

Once phase one is completed, the second phase of the trial will begin which will see the demonstration of the service to scale - operating robotically over three months, without ground observers.