Meet your environment

The problem of monitoring aquatic ecosystems is a serious issue, especially in countries that lack the financial means to pursue this issue. Hence, water quality monitoring activities are sporadic at best. This, in turn, deprives water management authorities, engineers, and scientists of much-needed information that could help them in better managing aquatic habitats.

We propose to develop low-cost water quality measuring instruments that will be able to send measured data to an online database. This would provide the means for continuous water quality monitoring. The constructed instruments would be based on the Arduino system and would be equipped with a wireless data sending capability. 

If this kind of water quality monitoring strategy would be scaled globally, all the gathered data could be shared amongst various agencies, researchers, and even countries. By employing this kind of low-cost, yet reliable instrument would expand our knowledge about the aquatic habitats in our care.

The specific problem that our solution aims to tackle is the water quality monitoring of aquatic habitats. This activity is essential to provide much-needed data that can help us in understanding and managing water bodies that provide a home for countless species of plants and animals. However, in order to perform these activities, very expensive equipment has to be used paired with a considerable amount of fieldwork. All this translates to money needed for these activities. Therefore, in countries that lack the finances to support agencies and other organizations in charge of managing water resources, water quality monitoring is often omitted or significantly reduced. This is the current situation in our country (Republic of Serbia) as well. Unfortunately, extensive aquatic habitats with their inhabitants are not restricted to rich countries. Hence, providing the means (methodology, blueprints, expertise, and experiences) for institutions, organizations, and researchers worldwide to perform water quality measurements for the fraction of the money currently needed, can result in more gathered water quality data that can and should be used to preserve and properly manage aquatic habitats all around the world.

Our solution to the described problem is to build low-budget water quality probes using the Arduino system. We will build water quality probes that can communicate wirelessly with a master unit that can transmit the measured values to an online database. This will give a great advantage to water management authorities since they will be able to utilize affordable but reliable water quality probes that are fully automated. Although the usage of water quality probes by themselves is not a novel idea, connecting spacially distributed probes of the same water body (i.e., same aquatic habitat) to a digital online database is undoubtedly state-of-the-art. This will bring much-needed effectiveness to this kind of endeavor. Water quality measurements are costly and time-consuming. Our idea can solve this problem, as probes would be build to withstand field conditions for a considerable amount of time, and it can send data from a remote location. This data would then be aggregated to an online database. This would produce a novel tool that could allow experts to make correlations between various, continuously measured water quality parameters and aid them in making crucial decisions regarding water resources management.

The impact of our solution that we hope to achieve would be through the data acquired by implementing the proposed monitoring systems. This approach would gather the information that could lead to the overall improvement of aquatic habitats and water bodies. Communities that live adjacent to these water bodies will have multiple benefits from their improvement. These benefits range from a more healthy and sustainable environment, more revenue from tourists, and a general uplift of local communities. 

Another impact that shouldn’t be neglected is the impact this online database would have on the research community. If the idea is scaled across regions and countries, it will generate an invaluable data source that could be utilized to understand and manage aquatic habitats. The future potentials of tackling these issues can hardly be over-exaggerated.

Our idea gives a possible solution to provide scalable and verifiable monitoring and data collection to track ecosystem conditions. This will be achieved through the development of low-budget yet reliable sensors to track water quality parameters. These instruments will be designed in such a way to be partially autonomous and to transmit the measured data to an online database. Our proposal can provide the means to track the conditions in aquatic habitats and to enable a more efficient management of water resources. We are determined to pursue our idea since we believe it can significantly contribute to bettering our environment.

In the past few years, we participated in a number of projects (both national, project ID TR 37009 and international HUSRB/1602/12/0014 and

HUSRB/0901/221/001) aimed at tackling environmental issues. In these, we encountered a series of problems, ranging from lack of financing to opposition from various authorities, etc. 

Therefore, we decided to take the matter into our own hands, so to speak, and started developing a sensor for measuring water quality data. We have a prototype ready that is due for testing. We acquired a location where we can build a large pond with its own ecosystem where we can perform the testing of both of the developed sensors and the measures that can be taken to improve water quality. Hence we are confident that our proposal is well into the Prototype stage and ready to move on to the Pilot stage.

The proposed idea is innovative since it aims to build low-budget water quality probes using the Arduino system. We will build water quality probes that can communicate wirelessly with a master unit that can transmit the measured values to an online database. This will give a great advantage to water management authorities since they will be able to utilize affordable but reliable water quality probes that are fully automated. Although the usage of water quality probes by themselves is not a novel idea, connecting spacially distributed probes of the same water body (i.e., same aquatic habitat) to a digital online database is undoubtedly state-of-the-art. This will bring much-needed effectiveness to this kind of endeavor. Water quality measurements are costly and time-consuming. Often, the staff is needed to make trips to hard-to-reach locations. Therefore, these monitoring activities are often neglected and reduced to a bare minimum due to budgetary constraints. Our idea can solve this problem, as probes would be build to withstand field conditions for a considerable amount of time, and it can send data from a remote location. This data would then be aggregated to an online database that would be built so that it can be uploaded both automatically (by deployed water quality probes on the field) and manually. This would produce a novel tool that could allow experts to make correlations between various, continuously measured water quality parameters and aid them in making crucial decisions regarding water resources management.

Our team is made up of five individuals.

Zoltan Horvat, Ph.D. - project manager. In charge of managing the project, the team members as well as making sure the project goals are achieved. Furthermore, providing expertise on water management and water quality monitoring issues.

Mirjana Horvat, Ph.D. - team member. In charge of selecting the water quality parameters that meaningfully describe the state of an aquatic habitat, planning and building a prototype water body for testing the developed sensors, as well as testing measures that can improve water quality.

Kristian Pastor, Ph.D. - team member. In charge of calibrating the developed water quality sensors, as well as performing laboratory analysis regarding water quality parameters.

Biljana Isic, M.Sc. - team member. In charge of field measurements, including the field testing of the developed water quality sensors both on the pilot site and on other water bodies.

Milorad Markovic, M.Sc. - team member. In charge of constructing the water quality sensors using the open-source electronics platform, developing the online database, etc.

We are located in an ethnically diverse region in Europle, called the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. Therefore, the concepts of diversity and inclusion are implemented in our daily lives, as well as in our project team. We aimed to build a small team based on competence. Since this was our only criteria, and since we live in a diverse community, our team is also diverse.

We have 3 males and 2 females.

We have individuals belonging to the Hungarian, Serbian and other ethnicities.

We have team members that are citizens of three neighbouring countries (Hungary, Serbia and Bosnia and Hercegovina).

We have members of the LGBT community in our ranks.

We are trying to solve problems in monitoring water quality parameters that describe the state of aquatic habitats. We aim to provide scalable and verifiable monitoring and data collection to track ecosystem conditions. 

Our proposal tries to achieve this goal through the development of low-budget yet reliable sensors to track water quality parameters base on an open-source electronics platform. These monitoring instruments will be designed in such a way to be partially autonomous and to transmit the measured data to an online database. Our proposal can provide the means to track the conditions in aquatic habitats and to enable a more efficient management of water resources. We are determined to pursue our idea since we believe it can significantly contribute to bettering our environment.