10053333Smart BuoyClosedCR&D BilateralISCFThe collaboration between Iknaia, University of Hertfordshire (UH) and OSIL (Ocean Scientific International Limited) will provide a low cost, highly accurate, real-time digital overview of marine water quality. This innovation will significantly improve the way in which we currently monitor our oceans. It will replace manual sampling and enable more locations to be monitored, not just here in the UK, but the rest of the world. Enhanced measurement of water quality will help us to protect our marine and bathing environments and support the identification and control of pollution sources. Mobile computing and remote sensing have been identified by the Royal Academy of Engineering as two of the upcoming IT waves that will positively disrupt the operational models of all sectors. The partners will deliver a smart monitoring buoy capable of operating in a marine environment, measuring and transmitting a range of datasets that allow water quality to be monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This will include the assessment of coliforms, which are direct indicators of environmental pollution. The data will be evaluated holistically using AI models and then displayed in different formats on a visually coherent dashboard. The dashboard can be used to support both scientific evaluation and inform the public. Data will be held in an open source format for further analysis. By integrating these technologies, this project will primarily look to reduce the cost of monitoring and evaluating coliforms which will therefore enable more buoys to be deployed in more areas longer term.Iknaia will lead the project and are experts in small sensor technology and building networks using Bluetooth, WiFi and LoRaWAN. They supply Air Quality Networks and other solutions using low cost sensors, providing continuous and real-time monitoring, whilst decreasing costs, improving efficiency and increasing productivity. They will deliver the interface for the data received from the smart buoy, deploy the AI models and create the visualisation dashboard. OSIL are leading global experts in the design & manufacture of integrated systems for environmental monitoring in all marine environments, from shallow coastal waters to full ocean depth and will create the buoy and provide the sensors and the data feed. The University of Hertfordshire Communications and Intelligent Systems (CIS) Research Group has extensive experience in intelligent ICT systems, self-adaptive architectures, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning on the edge technologies, and will develop the AI model architectures and algorithms.