WATER QUALITY MONITORING WITH THE USE OF ROBOTIC BOATS

According to the River Basin Management Plans, it is of great importance to preserve water quality conditions and if possible, upgrade the ecological and chemical status. Current monitoring strategies are highly susceptible to hazardous events, such as direct discharge of sewage or run-off from agricultural areas. Such events occur occasionally and are often not reflected by fixed date measurements and the results of those investigations are in many instances poor in terms of data density. A more detailed investigation is necessary in order to correlate pressures with the impacts to water quality and therefore, it is very important to afford early warning systems that can measure real-time parameters which can be associated with possible pollution.
EYDAP’s innovative strategy by using robotic boats could increase available water quality data in real-time, without requiring labor-intensive and costly monitoring schemes. This highly promising and target-oriented approach uses autonomous boats equipped with appropriate sensors (Chl-a, Intelligent Spectral Analyzer, DO, pH, EC). In Kifissos river, the main river of Attica region in Greece, the robotic boat covered almost 2 km, reaching the mixing zone of the river with the sea, identifying interesting profiles of the physicochemical parameters that were monitored.
Beneficiaries of INTCATCH service are Public Authorities (Ministries, Prefectures, Municipalities), Academic Community, Institutes of Inland Waters and all citizens.