Accessible AI software tackles water challenges

The platform helps water managers make decisions relating to water supply, flood protection, and more

Spotted: Droughts and floods are becoming more common, and this means the ability to access real-time water availability and quality forecasting is increasingly important. WaterWebTools is working to address this need with a scalable, web-based platform for hydrological and ecological forecasting.

The platform combines widely used, state-of-the-art modelling with real-time data and forecasts. With the software, infrastructure managers can make better-informed decisions related to water supply, flood protection, environmental sustainability, recreation, and agriculture. The platform is underpinned with sophisticated science-based models but makes them accessible to non-experts.

Applications available on the platform include ASAP Rural, which enables eco-hydrological forecasts for any location in the world; ASAP Reservoir, which produces hydrodynamic and water quality forecasts for lakes and reservoirs; ASAP Urban, which produces risk maps for residential areas threatened by stormwater incidents; and BGIS, which allows visualisation and postprocessing of large amounts of environmental data on the user’s own computer.

The company was spun out of Denmark’s Aarhaus University in 2021 and received initial funding from the InnoExplorer programme supported by Innovation Fund Denmark. The company has also worked on a number of EU-funded projects, such as helping create a digital twin of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon and its entire watershed in the SmartLagoon project.

As the weather becomes less predictable, Springwise is spotting a growing interest in forecasting tools. In addition to WaterWebTools’ platform, other recent innovations include a platform focusing on drought data and tools to forecast climate-sensitive diseases.

Written By: Lisa Magloff