WQeMS can be briefly summarized as a tool a) providing accurate products integrating local measurements and existing archives for validation, reference and calibration; b) allowing for water quality monitoring and risk management assimilating freely available satellite data (also commercial VHR data) with an increased spatial and time coverage; and c) smoothly adaptable to new areas with limited effort. Product generation automation is offered, both in the case of continuously monitored water surfaces and in the case of on-demand service requests. Products and services utilize widely adopted semantics, metadata and quality descirption standards, and are interoperable with any operational Decision Support System of water utilities (adopting at the same time Copernicus and GEOSS principles). Functionalities include APIs for service execution requests, alerts configuration and retrieval, generation of reports, and data product and statistics. The legislative framework, ethics’ aspects, and European Framework Directives have been acknowledged, establishing the operational framework conditions. Feedback, crowdsourcing, alerting, and reporting are automated.
Oceans, seas and watersAddressing target audiences and expressing needs
- Grants and Subsidies
- Business partners – SMEs, Entrepreneurs, Large Corporations
- Business Angels
The audience that WQeMS targets is the water utilities market and the relevant monitoring governmental agencies. The number of large companies involved in drinking water provision has reasonably been estimated of the order of roughly 15000. Based on the number of stakeholders contacted for a survey, it is deemed that 0.5% of the total is a reasonable estimate of those adopting the proposed solution at an initial stage of exploitation. Customer segments have been divided in two classes, depending on the prospected relationship, either of commercial or of collaborative type. A commercial relationship is envisaged with drinking water utilities, large water companies responsible for the monitoring of water resources, water analytics companies, and vendors of water quality monitoring software tools. A collaborative relationship is envisaged with water authorities, environmental agencies, public health bodies, universities/research centres, emergency services (e.g., Civil Protection), and Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS). Regarding CEMS a service delivery could result in reply to a tender for setting up an additional CEMS element.
The precise needs are:
– Establishment of initial B2B contracts (e.g., between WQeMS and a water utility or consultancy company or governmental agency).
– Acquisition of seed funding for the first marketability phase of the WQeMS (e.g., either in the form of a grant/subsidy or an investment or within collaboration framework).
– Incorporation of WQeMS service offer as add-on into existing market digital solutions portfolia in the form of B2B cooperations.
– Support for marketing and promotion.
– Consultation towards identification and penetration to side markets, such as the civil protection or agricultural sector ones (e.g., for flooding or rice cultivation, respectively).
- Public or private funding institutions
- Other Actors who can help us fulfil our market potential
- Private Investors
R&D, Technology and Innovation aspects
The overall level of maturity in terms of TRL is around 7. The maturity reached by the final delivered platform allows to setup the services in new areas in a semi-automatic way with a limited effort. Adjustments to provide WQeMS usage to expert users is also foreseen, requiring limited effort. Further development of currently used algorithms are foreseen, upon reinvestment in the first two years. (see beolw)
Scalability is envisaged either in the same regions, in which the use cases are located or in different countries. In principle, services are offered for any area covered by Sentinel data. On the other hand, validation requires availability of in-situ data for product calibration and verification. Therefore, it is considered an extended service to be assessed on a case-by case basis.
Replicability is guaranteed by the variety of use cases assessed during the project implementation period, encompassing water bodies at different environments, which experienced various water quality issues. Moreover, additional areas have been considered during the project lifetime, and assessed for replicability demonstration purposes. This was based on the collaboration with other EU projects.
For the sustainability of the platform a few early adopters are sufficient; reasonably around 8. They shall increase to about 75 large water suppliers companies after 1-2 years.
Being a federated solution service providers will run their service elements autonomously. Their margins are guaranteed by the initial proposed prices. Profits for investors are expected towards the 3rd year of operation, upon revising the initial prices.
