Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/T005564/1
A digital environment for water resources
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor M Scott, University of Glasgow, School of Mathematics & Statistics
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor CA Miller, University of Glasgow, School of Mathematics & Statistics
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor S Ray, University of Glasgow, School of Mathematics & Statistics
- Grant held at:
- University of Glasgow, School of Mathematics & Statistics
- Science Area:
- Freshwater
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Pollution and Waste
- Science Topics:
- Earth & environmental
- Instrumentation Eng. & Dev.
- Statistics & Appl. Probability
- Water Quality
- Abstract:
- Our proposal will develop and utilise smart sensors, test new infrastructure and approaches for data cleaning, as well as developing predictive analytics and a visualisation platform, to improve the next generation of environmental regulations for water resources. Our tools will allow businesses (eg the whisky and agricultural sectors) to individually assess and control their environmental interactions and ultimately enable regulators to remove the need for traditional environmental inspection and monitoring. Partners in the multi-disciplinary proposal are the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and the Innovation Centre for Sensor and Imaging Systems (CENSIS). Our project will scope out existing and new technology for sensing water resources in remote environments, and then in a demonstrator project, explore the practical implementation of a network of sensors across a catchment integrating data from the national river flow archive, the SEPA managed network of gauging stations, and rainfall information. The results will allow us to assess the potential of this technology to disrupt traditional approaches to environmental regulation by providing a framework for enhanced and superior information gathering while removing the extensive cost and regulatory burden associated with field officers conducting inspections and sampling. A key aspect of this proposal is the promotion and deployment of sensors and communication and analytical methods to extend a previous small scale sensor pilot into a prototype digital predictive and visualisation framework testing the communications infrastructure and integration of data streams to enhance the ability of the UK to better manage water resources (quality and availability) in the context of remote, rural environments. This links into existing networks including the national river flow archive and the SEPA supported network of river gauging stations. In this larger demonstrator project, further sensors will be deployed providing additional spatial coverage of water level sensors, while adding additional types of sensor (rainfall and soil moisture), as well as scoping using a satellite based communications solution. This study will evaluate the potential of reliable and easily deployable sensor communication infrastructure based on the low power wide area network LoRaWAN standard monitoring rural environmental areas. As well as data transmission and communication challenges we will also be attempting to address off-grid powering challenges by making use of low power devices and active duty cycle management as well as renewable energy sources (e.g. solar/wind) in a low cost sustainable format. We will use new infrastructure extending the range of environmental variables to be measured, and test different data communication technologies including satellite (IoT), daisy chaining LoRaWAN and using battery operated LoRaWAN and LoRaWAN hybrid repeater nodes. These are very leading edge and we will be working with the industry leader Semtech in not only new lower power silicon (Q319) but a roll-out of a new meshing standard (TBC). The Hybrid repeater nodes will be custom and bespoke to this project. Our proposal could lead ultimately to many new remote networks that are independent of any infrastructure requirements.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/T005564/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Innovation (R)
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Digital Environment
This grant award has a total value of £228,806
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DI - Staff | DA - Estate Costs | DI - T&S | DA - Other Directly Allocated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £30,316 | £50,930 | £17,266 | £40,562 | £6,792 | £8,226 | £74,714 |
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