News
Demonstration of MONOCLE & INTCATCH services to Greek Stakeholders Network of EYDAP, Athens, Greece
15 June 2022, Lake Marathon, Greece
An innovative water quality monitoring campaign took place successfully on the 15 th of June 2022, in order to communicate and disseminate MONOCLE & INTCATCH innovative technologies and services to the Greek Stakeholder Network. More than 30 attenders participated, representatives from Public Water Supply and Sewerage Companies (EYDAP, EYATH, DEYA’s), Public Authorities (‘Special Secretariat for Water’ under Ministry of Environment and Energy, Academic Community (NTUA, NKUA) and Research Centers (Institute of Marine Biological Resources and Inland Waters, NCSR Demokritos).
The campaign combined use of INTCATCH robotic boat of EYDAP and the drone developed within the framework of the MONOCLE project. The main goal was the Integrated Management of Water Resources aiming at cleaner water for the needs of society and citizens. EYDAP R&D researchers Giorgos Katsouras (chemist, PhD) and Nikos Tsalas (mechanical engineer, MSc) as well as Aerata Aerial Assessment Solutions drone operators Spyros Konstantinopoulos and Panagiotis Hatzikonstantinou (both civil aviation pilots), conducted parallel monitoring along the Marathon Dam and selected areas of the lake. The autonomous robotic boat collected in total more than 10.000 measurements of physicochemical parameters (chlorophyll, conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen) from the surface of the lake, while at the same time the flying drone, equipped with multispectral sensors (RGB), recorded more than 10.000 images for the calculation of chlorophyll-a, water turbidity and total suspended matter (SPM). The real-time results of robotic boat in comparison with the evaluation of the images from VITO researchers, proved the excellent quality of the water in Lake Marathon.
Following the demonstration an open discussion took place and all the participants expressed their interest to test MONOCLE-INTCATCH service in their catchments. Among others, Giorgos Sachinis, Director of Strategy and Innovation of EYDAP, showed special interest in those technologies of intelligent monitoring of surface waters. The more valuable perspectives that highlighted were:
- they can support monitoring projects of large water bodies
- they offer quick and flexible data collection, which can be easily and safely transferred and saved online
- they can cover a greater part of the area under study in minimum time, compared to standard field data collection methods
