AUG secured new EUROSTARS project titled, “AQUASHIELD”

On Oct 1 2019, AUG won a 3-year funding investment under the Industrial Research Assistance Program. AUG joined its partners KTH in Sweden, ALPES in Switzerland, and DBC in Belgium to kick off a new EUROSTARS project named “AQUASHIELD”.

AQUASHIELD aims to develop a fast, reliable and cost-effective tool for online water quality monitoring, in order to detect toxic agents and dangerous substances in the municipal sewage wastewater network, such as drugs, explosives and related precursors. The AQUASHIELD water monitoring system will realize the integration of laser-based Mid-Infrared (Mid-IR) spectroscopy and UV-Vis spectroscopy via machine learning chemometrics algorithms and fog computing architecture. The integrated system is expected to automatically complete one water sample analysis from the initial sample intake to the final test results within less than five (5) minutes. All of the sensor data and final test results can be easily accessed both locally and remotely via a customized Internet of Things (IoT) platform, which will meet the needs by various operational conditions in term of data network and power awareness. The AQUASHIELD system will also feature a very compact hardware configuration and can be installed at strategic locations within the municipal sewage network. Upon the successful completion of this project, the integrated AQUASHIELD system will be fully validated at laboratories and it will be preliminarily tested against selected field validation scenarios.