A.U.G. Signals in Greece is participating in the WaterSpy project along with eight other consortium 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.