A digital environment for water resources

Our proposal will develop and utilise smart sensors, test new infrastructure and approaches for data cleaning, as well as developing predictive analytics and a visualisation platform, to improve the next generation of environmental regulations for water resources. Our tools will allow businesses (eg the whisky and agricultural sectors) to individually assess and control their environmental interactions and ultimately enable regulators to remove the need for traditional environmental inspection and monitoring. Partners in the multi-disciplinary proposal are the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and the Innovation Centre for Sensor and Imaging Systems (CENSIS). Our project will scope out existing and new technology for sensing water resources in remote environments, and then in a demonstrator project, explore the practical implementation of a network of sensors across a catchment integrating data from the national river flow archive, the SEPA managed network of gauging stations, and rainfall information. The results will allow us to assess the potential of this technology to disrupt traditional approaches to environmental regulation by providing a framework for enhanced and superior information gathering while removing the extensive cost and regulatory burden associated with field officers conducting inspections and sampling.
A key aspect of this proposal is the promotion and deployment of sensors and communication and analytical methods to extend a previous small scale sensor pilot into a prototype digital predictive and visualisation framework testing the communications infrastructure and integration of data streams to enhance the ability of the UK to better manage water resources (quality and availability) in the context of remote, rural environments. This links into existing networks including the national river flow archive and the SEPA supported network of river gauging stations. In this larger demonstrator project, further sensors will be deployed providing additional spatial coverage of water level sensors, while adding additional types of sensor (rainfall and soil moisture), as well as scoping using a satellite based communications solution. This study will evaluate the potential of reliable and easily deployable sensor communication infrastructure based on the low power wide area network LoRaWAN standard monitoring rural environmental areas. As well as data transmission and communication challenges we will also be attempting to address off-grid powering challenges by making use of low power devices and active duty cycle management as well as renewable energy sources (e.g. solar/wind) in a low cost sustainable format. We will use new infrastructure extending the range of environmental variables to be measured, and test different data communication technologies including satellite (IoT), daisy chaining LoRaWAN and using battery operated LoRaWAN and LoRaWAN hybrid repeater nodes. These are very leading edge and we will be working with the industry leader Semtech in not only new lower power silicon (Q319) but a roll-out of a new meshing standard (TBC). The Hybrid repeater nodes will be custom and bespoke to this project.
Our proposal could lead ultimately to many new remote networks that are independent of any infrastructure requirements.

Our proposal makes the case for the "upgrading" of an existing distributed and instrumented small network in a rural catchment with the integration of new sensors, communications and data analytics and visualisation processes to deliver a prototype system to support water management and decision making.
Expected benefits are:
development and testing of a ruggedized sensor kit for water level, temperature, and soil moisture that could be extended to other environmental variables.
development, testing and demonstration of a communications solution for remote and rural areas
development, testing and demonstration of approaches to handle data quality assurance for high frequency environmental data streams
development of prototype visualisation tools for spatial and temporal data streams
scoping of formulation of new regulatory models using a digital solution to monitoring

Environmental Decision Makers and regulators. Both policy and industry sectors make critical decisions based on environmental information. Currently in the context of water abstraction, companies and farms gain a licence which stipulates the maximum volume that can be abstracted within a year, the regulators may formally physically inspect, but the use of a network of sensors, coupled with a support system will allow more effective decisions making by integrating streams of data to improve our understanding of interactions, as well as well as providing robust quantification of uncertainty.

Academic communities. Our proposed data assurance, modelling and visualisation system will provide a demonstration of our enhanced understanding of potentially complex environmental and commercial interactions. This will enable the environmental science communities to benefit from: an increased understanding of the interactions in environmental systems; better pattern detection and forecasting ability. The data science, and statistical communities will also benefit from the development of new algorithms to detect anomalies and gap fill, to develop models for data fusion across different data streams within this environment and, by understanding the methodological limitations, identify gaps and critical development required.

Environmental sensor network operators. Our feasibility study into establishing an infrastructure independent environmental network will elaborate recommendations for improvements to existing sensor networks including: what changes can be made by the individual networks to enable integration; what the benefits of co-location of sensors are; and what power savings can be made as well as communication solutions for remote environments.
As well as data transmission and communication challenges we will also address off-grid powering challenges by making use of low power devices and active duty cycle management as well as renewable energy sources (e.g. solar/wind) in a low cost sustainable format.

Businesses and farmers. Part of our demonstrator project will investigate network infrastructure requirements and technical specification for integrating individual sensor within a digital environment. Data will be made available to farmers, allowing operators to individually assess and control their environmental interactions and, in time, remove the burden of inspection and reporting. Additionally, it is anticipated that real-time data will enable the move from practically unenforceable annual maximum volumetric abstraction license limits to more sustainable instantaneous flow condition based abstraction limits. This will allow business to interact with the environment in a way that is sustainable for the given environmental conditions. In simple terms, this will protect businesses, by ensuring water resources are shared evenly during times of scarcity and allow increased use when resources are plentiful.