On March 18, 2022, A.U.G. Signals in cooperation with A.U.G. Signals Hellas deployed at the City of Corinth Greece a TRITON, AUG’s online multi-parameter water quality monitoring system.
Certified by ISO 9001:2015 in design, assembly, installation and servicing of water monitoring systems TRITON is an innovative online continuous water quality monitoring platform. This platform allows users to preemptively detect and diagnose problems in their water distribution networks by providing real-time data that can be accessible anytime and anywhere. TRITON provides continuous 24/7 online testing. By continuous on-line real-time monitoring prevents drinking water contaminations by notifying through smartphones the authorities when a water contaminant is present and its concentration grows. Hence, actions will be taken before the water contaminant reaches to levels that are harmful to the peoples’ health. Together with its leakage detection capability, TRITON is a powerful supporting system in monitoring drinking water in smart cities projects.
The partnership and close collaboration between AUG Signals and SOCAAR (Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research) at the University of Toronto has started since the beginning of AirSENCE development in 2014. Leveraging AUG’s expertise in machine-learning-based signal processing, multi-sensor information fusion and system integration with SOCAAR’s exceptional talents and state-of-the-art air quality monitoring facility as well as innovative research on atmospheric pollutants and sensors, AirSENCE has evolved to an advanced, accurate, and affordable Continuous Ambient Air Quality Micro-Monitoring Station (caaqMMS) providing comprehensive and accurate real-time air quality monitoring and contributing to the global effort in net-zero transformation to reduce GHG emissions, improve air quality and mitigate environmental inequity. https://mailchi.mp/utoronto.ca/engineeringwrap-up-5754277?e=853d27bc52
AUG is proud to be awarded by ESA among the other two winners in the downstream category for the “Novel Crop Disease Risk Assessment and Crop Monitoring Web-Based Tool” project. AUG would like to express our appreciation to all our collaborators, especially to AAFC and CSA who have always provided us with great support in the success of previous and current projects. We certainly look forward to more successful collaboration in the future.
Last week, A.U.G. Signals’ President and CEO, Dr. George Lampropoulos, attended the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Dubai as the reward A.U.G. Signals received being the third place winner of the Global Space Market Challenge 2021 organized by European Space Agency (ESA) and EURISY. Asides from pitching our project, innovative satellite-based crops disease risk assessment and crops monitoring tool, our President had a pleasure to meet with the Director General of ESA, Josef Aschbacher, during the event (October 26, 2021).
On September 30, our President and CEO, Dr. George Lampropolous, had a productive meeting with Mayor Vasilis Nanopoulos in his office at the city hall of Corinth, Greece with an effort of raising the awareness of sustainably monitoring the environment. Specifically, municipality of Corinth is interested in A.U.G. Signals Ltd. (AUG)’s project of developing wildfire detection and management tool and the municipality is committed to the successful outcome of this project by providing AUG with in-kind support and their expertise in fire fighting and prevention.
Dr. George Lampropoulos meeting with Mayor Vasilis Nanopoulos
AUG and UofT SOCAAR to carry out new project for Industrial Air Quality Monitoring
AUG Signals is delighted to be a part of the new academic-industry collaborative project with the Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research (SOCAAR) at the University of Toronto.
This is a one-year project where the partners will expand AirSENCE, an advanced, accurate and afforable Continuous Ambient Air Quality Micro-Monitoring Station (caaqMMS) to AirSENCE-FIM (Fence-line and Industrial Monitoring) for pilot tests at selected strategic locations in the industrial manufacturing communities.
AirSENCE-FIM is a new product line that involves the integration of new sensors and the added capabilities to measure VOC and H2S, as well as improvements to the sensitivity, longevity and seasonal accuracy shifts of the original AirSENCE devices. This industry-academic collaboration will help AirSENCE remain competitive in the smart cities landscape. Through offering new fence-line monitoring capabilities, AirSENCE will be able to better meet the expectations of clients operating within communities near major industrial emitters (oil sands, mining, pulp and paper, refineries and etc.)
Increased awareness of air pollution and its health impacts means there is a fast-growing need worldwide to monitor air quality. However, current low-cost air quality sensors have shortcomings with respect to sensor drift and degradation, which, along with interference effects from temperature and humidity, create challenges to acquire accurate data for long-term air quality analyses. Through continuous investment as well as collaboration with air quality experts at SOCAAR, AUG aims to overcome these market challenges and further enforce the user confidence in the accuracy and reliability of AirSENCE. The new AirSENCE-FIM will further expand AUG Signals’ environmental monitoring product portfolio and create an affordable and sustainable solution for industrial communities.
This project is funded and supported by the NSERC Alliance – Ontario Center of Excellence VIP Program.
AUG Signals is pleased to announce the official kickoff of our new CSA Project, titled “Improving Space-based Radar Reflectometry for Better Ocean State and Target Monitoring Using Advanced Data Processing”
This is a part of the CSA renewed funding initiative, smartEarth, which aims to develop earth observation applications with the use of satellite data.
Recently, there has been strong interest in space-based radar reflectometry—a procedure that utilizes signals of opportunity from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and communication satellites. Signal from such satellites continuously reflect from the earth surface, including oceans, and the reflected signal is received by observer satellites where the characteristics of the reflectors are analyzed. Microsatellites are preferred as observers due to their low cost, short deployment cycle and, most importantly, short distance from ground reflectors.
The objective of this new AUG project is to significantly improve the performance of space-based radar reflectometry for ocean-surface target monitoring by overhauling state-of-the-art data processing technology. This is technology is very important for Canada as space-based radar reflectometry using fleet of microsatellites can provide us the elusive capability of continuously monitoring arctic ocean.
Processed signals and data from satellites can provide valuable information on the geolocation of vessels, ships and other ocean-based transportation systems. Such time sensitive information can support Canada’s defense and security measures, as well as commercial logistics companies to understand the location of vessels, determine best shipping routes, and estimate delivery status.
Ocean monitoring using GNSS reflectometry also has many useful applications in the environmental sector. Take climate change for instance, the raising of earth’s average temperature poses many serious threats to our planet. With increasingly more glaciers and land-based ice melting, the rise in global sea level has caused devastating consequences to coastal habitats. Therefore, monitoring Canadian sea ice frequently and efficiently is an important and critical tool for the fight against climate change.
AUG awarded new AAFC project for the development of a crop disease risk assessment tool
Earlier this year in April, AUG won a new project under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)’s AgriScience Program. This project is focused on developing and demonstrating a novel crop disease risk assessment tool using remote sensing.
This tool will incorporate early crop classification, crop phenology and soil moisture estimates derived from earth observation remote sensing data. The objective of this 3-year project is to develop technologies that are capable of daily crop disease risk assessment and monitoring, including early season crop classification, enhancing crop phenology estimation and perdiction, and soil moisture estimation techniques.
This project is developed in collaboration with AAFC, Canola Council of Canada, and Bioenterprise Corporation. The final product of this project will be a web-based tool that will be fully tested and validated to assess and monitor crop disease risks.
The project will also further enhance AAFC’s technology to estimate surface soil moisture and crop biophysical information using SAR satellites. The crop phenology and soil moisture information will be integrated with meteorological information to develop a web-based disease risk tool for both the Canadian and global agriculture industry. The technology will positively transform agricultural production and efficiency by applying emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data analytics. It will also strengthen knowledge transfer and adoption by utilizing open access free satellite sensors, such as Sentinel-1/2 and RADARSAT Constellation Mission Compact Polarimetry data that will be conducive to a larger scale deployment of the technology.
Surface Water Eutrophication: an Issue Calling for Real-time Cloud Monitoring
A.U.G. Signals is embarking on a new research project, “Real-time cloud-based monitoring of nutrients in agricultural effluent for mitigation of algal blooms in surface water” with German partners, Hydroisotop GmbH and TUM. This is a 2 year joint R&D project supported by NRC-IRAP (Canada) and ZIM (Germany).
Eutrophication is a global environmental problem. It occurs when high nutrients and minerals in water causes an undesirable amount of algae increase. Eutrophic events are prevalent across multiple continents and signify a need for more robust monitoring to facilitate rapid responses to pollution threats. Therefore, in this project, partners aim to develop and test a real-time cloud-based monitoring platform by integrating real-time sensors and analyzers in order to monitor, record and communicate the real-time information of nutrient levels, pollution sources and cyanotoxins. The pilot test of sensor prototypes in both Canada and Germany over this project will provide the data to develop machine learning algorithms which can correlate the data of (1) between dissolved nutrient with total nutrient level; and (2) between dissolved nutrient with the production of cyanotoxins. The outcomes of this project will also provide the groundwork for partners to study the impact of real-time data to enhance existing nutrient reduction solutions.
In Canada, AUG will also continue to work with the academic partner, Prof. Scott Mundle, at the Great Lake Institute for Environmental Research of University of Windsor, who has extensive expertise in developing environmental sampling and field test methods. Dr. Mundle had his team currently have ongoing projects in greenhouse, agricultural, urban and oil/gas field watersheds that will serve as sample sites. With real-time monitoring data available remotely via a cloud-based platform, this project outcome will facilitate government, conservation authorities, and regulatory agencies to effectively measure, monitor and identify pollution sources.
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.
