Monthly Archives: May 2018

Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) has announced the end of long-term drinking water advisories in Deer Lake, ON and Sachigo Lake, ON First Nation communities as of April 23, 2018 and April 20, 2018 respectively. With ISC’s support and investment, AUG has been working with these two communities through Safe Water Project where AUG is responsible for providing operational support to the water operators and deploying TRITON Intelligent Water Surveillance® (TRITON) system to the communities.

Drinking water advisories are issued when the water supply is unsafe to drink—the reasons that might affect the water quality may include water line breaks, equipment failure or poor filtration/disinfection. Drinking water advisories may also be issued when a community does not have qualified personnel trained to operate and maintain the water facility. It has been on the Government of Canada’s agenda to lift all long-term drinking water advisories in First Nation communities by March 2021.

AUG, together with its partners and support from ISC, has implemented Safe Water Project in 19 First Nation communities in Ontario since 2015, and is progressing to include more First Nation communities in other provinces to eliminate and prevent drinking water advisories. AUG is excited to see the long-term drinking water advisories being lifted from partnering communities as well as other First Nation communities who have achieved the same.

ISC has also stated that the department will continue to make additional investments to support the finalization of remote water quality monitoring system, TRITON, in First Nation communities as well as fund for TRITON’s annual maintenance costs. As a proven technology that has assisted a number of communities to lift long-term drinking water advisories, AUG is committed to continuously support Safe Water Project and First Nation communities to eliminate and prevent drinking water advisories to secure safe drinking water.

Additional information on ISC’s latest updated on long-term drinking water advisories can be accessed here.

A.U.G. Signals in Greece is participating in the WaterSpy project along with eight other consortia across Europe. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731778. The project is an initiative of the Photonics Public Private Partnership (www.photonics21.org).

Pervasive and on-line water quality monitoring data is critical for detecting environmental pollution and reacting in the best possible way to avoid human health hazards. However, it’s not easy to gather such data, at least not for all contaminants. Currently, water utilities rely heavily on frequent sampling and laboratory analysis in order to acquire this information. For the situation to be improved, portable and high-performance devices for pervasive water quality monitoring are required. Such devices should expand current limitations in detecting contaminants, transcending today’s paradigms, and bridging different technologies available, allowing on-line monitoring of possible contaminants.

WaterSpy addresses this challenge by developing water quality analysis photonics technology suitable for inline, field measurements. WaterSpy technology will be integrated, for validation purposes, to a commercially successful water quality monitoring platform, in the form of a portable device add-on. WaterSpy will be used in the field for the analysis of critical points of water distribution networks. This will be demonstrated in two different demo sites in Italy.

The latest update on the WaterSpy project can be downloaded here: WaterSpy 2-pg