Exploring water quality monitoring and modelling in Bristol Harbour

This project analysed and visualised the quality of the water in Bristol’s Floating Harbour.
Water quality monitoring in smart city: A pilot project
Mobile water sensing unit
Currently the water quality in Bristol Harbour is measured by Bristol City Council by manually taking water. In this project, water quality data was collected, processed and archived using a mobile water sensing unit. The mobile sensing unit is self-powered by a solar panel and wirelessly transmits data through Wi-Fi. A database has been implemented in Bristol Is Open Virtual Machine to manage the water quality data in real time.
Data visualisation
A data visualisation module was developed in close collaboration with the Harbour stakeholders and support from the Bristol is Open Partnership, which makes the water quality condition available to stakeholders through their PC and smart phones in real time.
The real time high frequency remote water quality monitoring system developed in the project is a significant leap from the current lab-based water quality monitoring scheme carried out by the Bristol City Council and Environment Agency. The new system features a real time, remote reading, widely accessible observation system from the internet. It is the latest wireless-sensor-network based solution for environment monitoring. It utilises the latest technology including cloud computing, software-defined-network, open source software, smart city and the internet of things.
What's next
This project will form part of the Bristol Is Open smart city program and be part of the Urban Infrastructure Observatories in the UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure & Cities (UKCRIC).
People involved in this project
- Prof Dawei Han (Professor of Hydroinformatics)
- Prof Martin Cryan (Professor of Applied Electromagnetics and Photonics)
- Dr Naim Dahnoun (Reader in Teaching & Learning in Signal Processing)
- Dr Miguel Rico-Ramirez (Senior Lecturer in Radar Hydrology and Hydroinformatics)
- Sophie Ross-Smith (Project Manager)
- Hayley Shaw (Cabot Institute Manager)
- Dr Sean Shiels (Systems Centre Manager)
- Dr Theo Tryfonas (Reader in Smart Cities)
- Dr Bobby Stuijfzand (Data Science Specialist)
- Yiheng Chen (Civil Engineering PhD student)