Designing a Satellite-Based Smart Health Water Related Platform for Lake’s Water Quality Monitoring in Nordic Cities

Water Quality Management (WQM) in the 21st century is a growing challenge because of the large number of chemicals used in our everyday lives and industry, which often make their way into our waters  outbreaks of waterborne infectious diseases are still a public health concern in developed countries. More than 50% of European surface water bodies are either in less than good ecological status or potentially in worse condition. These trends reflect the need to shift from basic responsiveness to a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach that involves communities to improve access to safe water and improve the quality of water bodies. In this research project, we will design a mobile app platform for a Smart Water Quality Monitoring/Warning System based on Remote Sensing (RS) images and available in situ data for City of Oulu as one of the leading smart cities in Europe. This platform will forecast Water Quality (WQ) parameters for open lakes that people often use for swimming and leisure activities. It works as an early warning system to notify people about WQ in advance. The following parts will constitute the proposed Smart Water Quality Monitoring/Warning System (SWQMS): 1) Data collection from Landsat and Sentinel-2, 2) Data processing and information extraction about WQ criteria, 3) Designing a user interface to notify WQ condition to the community before planning for activities  4) real-time updating based on the inhabitant feedback on appearence water condition (Color, Turbidity etc.).  Along with the processing steps, this project faces some challenges on 1) Finding the best algorithm for WQ measurement in Nordic regions, 2) Improving temporal frequency in mid-resolution satellites in the cloudy sky, 3) Identifying the best machine learning approach to monitor and predict WQ in remote sensing, 4) combining remote sensing and GIS technology to designing a web-based early warning platform.

Two open lakes in north of Oulu City have been considered: 1) Kuivasjärvi and 2) Pyykosjärvi. These lakes are located in a populated area and are widely used for swimming and fishing in summertime. Eutrophication problems significantly face lakes due to the low oxygen content of the water and the prolonged water circulation because of specific layouts and geometry. Besides, due to their specific locations at the heart of densely populated areas, their quality are important for inhabitants’ health and the City of Oulu. Two lakes are connected through a narrow stream, and the lower lake (kuivasjärvi) is mainly fed by upper lakes and drain water of the watershed. The outlet of kuivasjärvi discharges into the Bay of Bothnia.

Finally, this platform is going to help to have a safe leisure activities in open lakes and even coastal regions so it can be extended to all around the world. By this application, it is expected to significantly reduce the number of water related disease outbreakes which are caused by swimming in open lakes and coastal regions.