Monitoring Flanders' Rivers with Sensors
Maintaining high water quality is essential for both environmental health and public well-being. In Flanders, daily environmental incidents such as sewage leaks or sudden changes in salinity threaten river ecosystems. To address this, the Flemish Environment Agency (VMM) has deployed over 200 multi-parameter sensors across Flemish waterways to continuously monitor key indicators of water quality. These sensors measure parameters such as temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, pH and conductivity every 15 minutes.
This real-time data feeds into an intelligent alerting system that enables rapid response to incidents, preventing issues such as fish extinctions due to oxygen depletion. Beyond monitoring, the project also explores smart maintenance strategies to extend sensor lifespan and reduce operational costs. Using advanced machine learning models, the system predicts oxygen-poor conditions before they occur, allowing preventive action. In addition, a tracing algorithm, developed in the earlier BE-GOOD project, tracks the origin and movement of polluted water upstream or downstream.
This integrated, data-driven approach represents a major step forward in proactive water management, combining continuous monitoring, predictive analytics, and smart maintenance to safeguard Flanders’ rivers.
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