WaterKnowledge - Knowledge-driven Digitalisation of Water Environments

While the Internet of Things (IoT) has promised a world where our environment will be connected to the digital world, most of the important environmental parameters are still not (or barely) digitalized. In particular, chemical parameters to assess water quality are not accessible in real-time at a large scale even when there is a great interest and need for them. Two aspects are currently limiting the large-scale digitalization of chemical parameters. First, cheap and reliable sensors for many chemical species are missing. Second, a suitable data transfer and handling paradigm to cope with large-scale sensor deployments is missing. Contrary to standard IoT systems, environmental monitoring means that data transfer is limited, if at all possible. Sensors will often not be maintained resulting in drift and loss of reliable signal quality. In this synergy project, we tackle those limiting aspects not only by developing new sensors for chemical parameters but by using advanced data compression and transfer strategies to bring to life a novel environmental sensor paradigm that is driven by knowledge to generate knowledge. Our vision is to start a new era in environmental monitoring and to connect the chemical world to the digital world.