A consortium of British marine expertise corporations has secured Innovate UK funding to deploy non-invasive Uncrewed Floor Vessels (USVs) for water high quality monitoring in three key South West regional ports; Dartmouth, Falmouth and Plymouth.
Led by Somerset-based marine acoustic monitoring consultants, MSeis, the ‘Smart Ports, Clean Waters’ venture companions purpose to remodel public understanding of water ecosystems in ports and harbours within the South West of England by offering broad vary, accessible information regarding air pollution within the area’s rivers and estuaries. MSeis shall be supported by technical companions, HydroSurv (based mostly in Exeter) and Chelsea Applied sciences.
Water high quality requirements have grow to be a urgent concern within the UK. Beneath the Water Framework Directive, simply 14% of UK rivers at the moment meet the factors for ‘good ecological status’. The River Dart has just lately been given bathing water standing throughout 4 tidal places, highlighting the speedy want for a sustainable water high quality monitoring answer to detect potential points associated to agricultural run-off, untreated sewage and hydrocarbon contamination.
The ‘Smart Ports, Clean Waters’ end-to-end answer will see a specialist sensor payload from Chelsea Applied sciences built-in into MSeis’ three, battery electrical HydroSurv REAV-16 uncrewed vessels. The remotely managed USVs will harvest a spread of water high quality and eutrophication information inside inland waters on weekly deployments by MSeis from their stations in Dartmouth, Falmouth and Plymouth, with the outcomes broadly accessible to regional stakeholders through a cloud-based, geospatial information viewing platform developed by HydroSurv.
David Hull, CEO of HydroSurv, mentioned: “This zero-emission, safe and sustainable solution for water quality data collection will achieve widespread coverage at three of the South West’s key harbours using highly automated, robotic vessels overseen by shore-based personnel. The consortium is committed to serving public interest, operating independently from other public and private monitoring efforts, with the goal of providing accurate and unbiased information to the community.”
Through the 12-month take a look at and demonstration marketing campaign, which is able to showcase the cloud-based visualisation platform, different anticipated outputs embody detailed weekly datasets from every harbour, analysis workshops involving the port companions and the additional enhancement of integration and survey techniques data.
MSeis Managing Director, Mark Higginbottom, mentioned: “This project will make a real difference to the environmental monitoring of our harbours and coastal waters. We are thrilled to be working with HydroSurv and Chelsea Technologies, whose knowledge and skill sets will complement our own offshore experience and expertise.”
The South West’s wealthy maritime heritage and robust financial tie to tourism, fisheries and leisure marine makes it an excellent testing floor for this groundbreaking pilot, strengthening the area’s technological innovation popularity for the worldwide blue economic system.
