UK: Skyports and Partners “Win Major Investment From Ofwat Innovation Fund, Breakthrough Challenge”

The fifth Water Break­through Chal­lenge has award­ed more than UKP42 mil­lion to 16 inno­va­tion projects solv­ing major chal­lenges in the water sec­tor, includ­ing a project com­pris­ing of Sky­ports, Northum­bri­an Water, Maku­tu, New­cas­tle Uni­ver­si­ty and Pro­teus Instru­ments, reports a press release.

Under the title ‘Major Smart Skies, Healthy Waters’ the group was named a win­ner. The release says, “Smart Skies, Healthy Waters, a world-first inno­va­tion that uses auto­mat­ed drones and real-time data ana­lyt­ics to mon­i­tor water qual­i­ty has been named a win­ner of the fifth Water Break­through Chal­lenge by the Ofwat Inno­va­tion Fund, also being a head­line win­ning project for the chal­lenge.”

Over a 10 year peri­od, the Ofwat Inno­va­tion Fund is invest­ing UKP600 mil­lion in inno­v­a­tive projects and tech­nolo­gies to ben­e­fit the envi­ron­ment, soci­ety and cus­tomers.

Richard Warne­ford, Head of Waste­water at Northum­bri­an Water, com­ment­ed, “This project pro­vides a ground-break­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to har­ness new tech­nolo­gies to enable more fre­quent mon­i­tor­ing of our bathing waters. It will be a world-first and a step change for our sec­tor, help­ing to ensure health­i­er waters for our cus­tomers, com­mu­ni­ties and our envi­ron­ment.” 

The release con­tin­ues, “Cur­rent man­u­al water qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing meth­ods are labour-inten­sive, infre­quent and, when car­ried out at sea, car­ry safe­ty risks. With lim­it­ed alter­na­tive meth­ods that are dif­fi­cult to scale, Smart Skies Healthy Waters offers a world-first solu­tion that will trans­form how the water sec­tor can man­age resources, respond to risk, and serve com­mu­ni­ties.”

James Sum­sion, CEO of Maku­tu, remarked, “Smart Skies Healthy Waters is a pow­er­ful exam­ple of how inno­v­a­tive think­ing can tack­le real-world chal­lenges, in this case, bring­ing real-time coastal water qual­i­ty data direct­ly to the pub­lic. This fund­ing marks a major mile­stone, enabling us to scale our impact — not just across the UK, but glob­al­ly — deliv­er­ing high-qual­i­ty, action­able data exact­ly when and where it’s need­ed.”

The solu­tion works by com­bin­ing auto­mat­ed drones, advanced sen­sors and cloud-based ana­lyt­ics, to deliv­er data direct­ly to water com­pa­nies and the gen­er­al pub­lic, pro­vid­ing vital insights into the health of coastal waters.

Sam­ples will be analysed close to the site at “lab in a box” loca­tions, pro­vid­ing results in near real-time. This data will then be made pub­lic, empow­er­ing vis­i­tors to the coastal sites with infor­ma­tion on the qual­i­ty of the water. This tech dri­ven approach will trans­form how the water sec­tor can man­age resources, respond to risk and serve com­mu­ni­ties.

Alex Brown, Direc­tor of Drone Ser­vices, Sky­ports, said, “Mon­i­tor­ing and improv­ing the UK’s water qual­i­ty is impor­tant to all of us. With drones we can reach fur­ther, more fre­quent­ly and pro­vide bet­ter insights com­pared to the nor­mal way of col­lect­ing water sam­ples.” 

He con­tin­ued, “We start­ed work­ing with Northum­bria Water and Maku­tu two years ago with our first water mon­i­tor­ing ser­vice, and this is the lat­est mile­stone to take this ser­vice to the next step. In the future we see a large net­work of water mon­i­tor­ing drones fly­ing BVLOS around key water sites in the UK, pro­vid­ing instant insights back to Northum­bri­an Water, as well as oth­er util­i­ties, allow­ing them to take action where required to keep our water­ways clean.”

Alex Brown

Maku­tu brings exper­tise in cloud data plat­forms, AI and IoT, asso­ci­at­ed with enter­prise-scale dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, to the heart of the UK’s envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenge.

David Black, CEO of Ofwat stat­ed, “The lev­el of ambi­tion of this year’s win­ners is remark­able. We are sup­port­ing these projects to prove their impact so that they can be scaled, not only here in Eng­land and Wales, but export­ed around the world as a dri­ver of eco­nom­ic growth.” 

To find out more about this year’s 16 win­ners or to dis­cov­er pre­vi­ous win­ners, click on: waterinnovation.challenges.org . 

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyportsdroneservices.com

www.makutu.io

Chal­lenge Works

(Images: Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices)

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