ESA selects Scalian and WaterShed Monitoring Europe to develop its project

Cyanobacteria bloom prediction project.

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ESA selects Scalian and WaterShed Monitoring Europe to develop their cyanobacteria bloom prediction project

Scalian and WaterShed Monitoring Europe have been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) through their ESA Space Solutions Initiative and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) for the BEPS-IA (Bloom Event Prediction by Satellite Images Analysis) project. By using satellite imagery, this project aims to enable all water managers to better manage this precious resource and to prevent possible health risks related to drinking water, swimming, fishing and agriculture.

Responding to a water management issue

In the context of global warming and the development of human activity near water sources, bloom events (proliferation of cyanobacteria likely to lead to water contamination) are tending to multiply, and the risk is consequently growing for an ever-increasing human population consuming a non-renewable resource.

To address this issue, ESA is supporting an ambitious project to predict these bloom events using infrared satellite photographs, known as BEPS-IA (Bloom Event Prediction by Satellite Images Analysis).

Scalian and WaterShed Monitoring Europe, two complementary areas of expertise

The two companies will combine their expertise in their respective fields for this project. Indeed, with over 30 years of experience in the aerospace sector and 6 years of involvement in artificial intelligence, Scalian offers this project a solid expertise in the automation of image processing and information extraction by deep learning. For its part, WaterShed Monitoring Europe specialises in the processing, management and exploitation of water quality data, as well as in spatial image processing.

The project will start in April with a seven month feasibility study on a test lake in Canada. Following this first stage of innovation, a generalisation to the whole of France and then worldwide is envisaged. Scalian and WaterShed Monitoring Europe are planning to start industrialising the solution in January 2022.

“For over 30 years, Scalian has been committed to the quality and excellence of its services, but also to its social and environmental responsibility. Through this project, we want to develop a responsible and ethical use of the most innovative digital and space technologies. With one of the greatest challenges of our time: the protection and rational management of our water resources.” says Yvan Chabanne, CEO of Scalian Group.

“The innovative approach of this project will be based on the use of infrared images taken from space, but also on the use of technological solutions for the storage and analysis of water quality data. All this data collection and management will be rich in information to anticipate the issues linked to the consumption of key resources such as water and the impacts of future health or biological crises on human activities and vice versa.” adds Sonja Behmel, President of WaterShed Monitoring Europe.