Water quality is a key worldwide issue relevant to human consumption & food production, industry, nature and recreation. The European Copernicus programme includes satellite sensors designed to observe water quality, and services to provide data and information to end-users in industry, policy, monitoring agencies and science. However, water quality data production is split across three services Marine, Climate Change, and Land, with different methods and approaches used and some areas, notably some transitional waters, not supported by any service.
The CERTO project has completed and addressed this lack of harmonisation by undertaking research and development necessary to produce harmonised water quality data from each service. CERTO focussed on methods to classify waters, using satellite observations, together with the most comprehensive existing in situ data sets and additional data gathering within the project. Methods were be improved to remove the atmospheric signal, particularly problematic in near-coastal and transitional waters, as well as to flag waters where the bottom is visible. CERTO also evaluated optical water quality Indicators, as specified by the broad group of end-users engaged in the project from industry, monitoring agencies and science communities. CERTO investigated cross-cutting Indicators for use across coasts, transitional and inland waters including large rivers (monitored through the Water Framework and Marine Strategy Framework Directives). The project contributed to DANUBIUS the European research infrastructure on River-Sea Systems, and international communities such as Group on Earth Observation (GEO) AquaWatch and Blue Planet, the Lagoons for Life initiative as well as supporting the United National Sustainable Development Goals.
The main output of the project was a prototype system that can be “plugged into” the existing Copernicus services, used on cloud platforms, or in popular open-source software used widely by the community (SNAP). CERTO produced the evidence needed by the “entrusted entities” that run the Copernicus services as to the improvements, potential to increase the user community, possible downstream services and wider impact of the prototype
CERTO achieved its objectives by uniquely bringing together the leaders of the water quality data production in the three Copernicus Services, four SMEs involved in research and innovation and downstream water quality services, the Climate-KIC that leveraged a pan-European partnership and a community of innovators and entrepreneurs, four research intensive institutes/ universities, together with leaders of end-user relevant communities either in the team or as advisors.
