Diagnosing controls of pollution hot spots and hot moments and their impact on catchment water quality
Pioneering innovations in experimental analytics, data science and mathematical modelling
Planetary boundaries of river water pollution are at risk of being breached, with dangerous consequences for human and environmental health, economic prosperity, and water security. The current paradigm for environmental management is predicated on the understanding of average conditions. However, we know environmental pollution can vary markedly in space and time. This interdisciplinary Large Grant (co-created with non-academic partners and as a NERC-NSF collaboration) will pioneer innovations in experimental analytics, data science and mathematical modelling to yield new mechanistic understandings of the dynamic drivers of multi-contaminant pollution hotspots (spaces) and hot moments (times) in a changing water world.
We aim to support the delivery of the UK 25-Year Environment Plan and the US Clean Water Act. By designing and implementing future management strategies in the face of climate and environmental change it is essential to evaluate the relative impact of non-linear pollution hotspots and hot moments on river basin scale water quality dynamics.
Scalable field diagnostic technologies
To diagnose multi-contaminant water pollution hotspots and hot moments by innovating the deployment of next generation high frequency in-situ adaptive water quality sensor platforms.
Smart water quality monitoring network solutions
To understand the dynamic changes to the scales at which pollution hotspots and hot moments affect catchment water quality by developing smart water quality monitoring network solutions that track water pollution during pollutant transfer events from point to river basin scales.
Data science innovations
To create data science innovations that enable pollution sources to be diagnosed and to improve our understanding of the mechanisms controlling connectivity between pollution sources and river networks as drivers of pollution hotspots and hot moments.
Smart water quality monitoring network solutions
To pioneer models utilising smart water pollution data to improve predictive capacity at river basin scale and quantify the relative importance of pollution hotspots and hot moments.
Practice and Policy Intervention
To co-create pathways for practical and policy-relevant interventions to deliver effective water quality management.
“We will deliver SMARTWATER's aim to diagnose multi-contaminant water pollution hotspots and hot moments and understand their key drivers to predict their importance for water quality dynamics across scales by focussing on experimental observatories as multi-scale demonstration sites in intensively managed landscapes..”
— SMARTWATER Team
Contact
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
Email
Project Lead (Stefan): s.krause@bham.ac.uk
Project Facilitator (Suman): s.hira@bham.ac.uk