Strathclyde academic co-leads on project involving Scottish Spacetech specialist Krucial to tackle global water stress
Scottish scaleup Krucial, which uses space technology to provide digital solutions anywhere on earth, has been awarded a contract from the European Space Agency, to develop a water monitoring solution with Dr Scott McGrane, Senior Lecturer in Water Resources and Climate Change, being the University of Strathclyde’s co-lead on the project.
This award follows the initiative launched by ESA in 2023 in partnership with CEO Water Mandate’s Water Resilience Coalition (WRC), called Digitising Water Resilience – Acting on Water Stress in Basins.
Krucial, which recently raised further funding of $3.7M, will lead a consortium including Strathclyde as well as SAS, the leader in data and artificial intelligence (AI); Deep Planet, an agtech startup and AI specialist; and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), a public research institution focused on agriculture and life sciences.
The study has also received support from Jacobs, Clean International and Lovexair Foundation.
The consortium will develop a cutting-edge water-resilience monitoring and analysis solution. It will combine multiple data sets including in-situ ground sensor data, weather data and space-based data, moving this data from river basins to a cloud-computing platform via Krucial’s innovative hybrid connectivity technology.
The data analytics platform – powered by AI and internet of things (IoT) analytics from SAS – will analyse water levels and water quality for the Earth’s 100 most populous river basins. The platform will make this important information continuously available to policymakers, scientists, businesses and government agencies. With it, they can make better decisions about managing precious water resources.
River basins provide water for billions of people worldwide, and with a reduction in freshwater supply expected in the coming years, this project seeks to drive interventions to reduce water usage, minimise pollution and improve water resilience globally.
The technology is also expected to benefit agriculture, aquaculture and others who rely on water for business operations. They too can use the information from the platform to manage water resources, monitor flooding and drought risks and boost sustainability.
Allan Cannon, co-founder and CEO of Krucial, said, “This project has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people, using the latest space and analytics technology to benefit water basins across every corner of the globe by enabling data-led interventions and practices. Without access to the insights that our combined solution will provide, it is impossible to take the necessary steps to tackle water stress, and I’m extremely proud that Krucial is leading the fight against climate change on multiple fronts.
“I’m confident that the end solution will be a game-changer for policymakers, businesses and communities as we face ever-increasing stress in freshwater supply. With backing from the European Space Agency and some of the biggest companies on earth, we have the chance to achieve something truly transformative for the planet.”
Dr Scott McGrane, Senior Lecturer in Water Resources and Climate Change and the University of Strathclyde’s co-lead on the project, said, “Freshwater access remains a global challenge, and the climate crisis threatens this critical resource even further. This timely and exciting project will provide significant opportunities for innovative monitoring of global river basins, with the potential to transform the way management decisions are taken regarding water.
“Tackling grand challenges such as equitable and sustainable freshwater access requires an interdisciplinary approach, and the team that Krucial has created for this project has the necessary skills and experience to do just that. We are looking forward to contributing to the economic and environmental impact analysis of upscaling this technology to wider implementation, with potentially global impacts.”
The funding call for the project was from a partnership between the European Space Agency, CEO Water Mandate and 30+ members of the Water Resilience Coalition looking to address the global water crisis in its three dimensions: availability, quality and accessibility.
The full press release can be read on Krucial’s webpage https://www.krucial.com/news/krucial-esa-water-resilience-project