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Northumbrian Water researches use of drones in river water quality improvement

by Trevor Loveday

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE

Northumbrian Water has teamed up with a data management company to research the use of drones in determining and improving the quality of the region’s rivers and coastal waters.


Northumbrian’s partner in the project, cloud data experts, Makutu, has started a desk-top study of how drone technology might be deployed in routine sampling and in-situ, real-time water quality assessments.

This research will look at how drones can be used to harness sensing, artificial intelligence, and data analytics in remote water-quality monitoring of key coastal and inland locations.


Currently, the water company is only able to survey water quality by manually taking water samples from sites. This can prove difficult when sites are long distances away, in very rural areas and in inclement weather conditions. It said it expects to see “a number of potential benefits from the drone study, such as improved access to hard-to-reach areas, reduced carbon footprint, more data over a larger area, and much faster results.”


It added: “With more frequent and detailed monitoring, researchers also hope that this will mean once the monitoring programme is in place, local water quality results can be made available to the public, in near real-time.”


According to Northumbrian Water, once the desk-top study is complete, the first drone flight tests are expected to take place later this year and throughout next year, with a potential full roll-out in 2025.

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