HYdro-POwer-Suite

Project Information

HYPOS

Grant agreement ID: 870504

DOI 10.3030/870504

Closed project

EC signature date 31 October 2019

Start date 1 December 2019

End date 30 November 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Space

Total cost € 2 397 120,00

EU contribution € 1 994 370,00

Coordinated by

EOMAP GMBH & CO KG
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HYPOS (HYdro-POwer-Suite)

Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2022-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Hydropower as the world’s largest source of renewable energy has a high unused potential to be explored in times of a changing global energy policy. The economic and ecological evaluation of existing and new hydropower developments rely on a number of environmental conditions. For example, the major drivers of the reservoir storage capacity over time, related reinvestment and of the operations costs are directly related to the sediment regime and sediment trapping.
With the developed easy accessible online decision support tool (DST) HYPOS environmental and economic investment planning and monitoring based on Earth Observation (EO) technologies and modelling for the hydropower industry provides essential assets for hydropower developers, managers and decision makers by bringing together high-quality satellite-based measurements for historic time periods, up-to-date modelled hydrological parameters with nowcasting on various orderable levels of detail and available in-situ data for integrated baseline and environmental impact assessments. This new tool significantly contributes on a trans-national as well as on a global scale, with independent, standardized and consistent information over a wide range of different water bodies and spatial scales. The main objective of the HYPOS project has been to enable the uptake of cost-effective high-quality water monitoring and data services on local, regional and global level for the hydropower stakeholders. The development of an client-accepted, upscalable and validated soliution is leading towards the successful market-take up, supported by dediacted marketing camapigns and materials.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

As first steps towards implementation of the HYPOS tool, user requirements have been gathered and analysed. The evaluation of the market potential of the proposed service, focussing on the global hydropower market, together with first pricing and gouverance structure of the service concept work package formed the overall framework of the newly developed tool. A set of measurable service-related key performance indicators to guide and monitor the service implementation close to the user requirements.The infrastructure developments for HYPOS included the building of an upscalable backend architecture, standardized interfaces and targeted frontend solutions, which have been implemented in a first demonstration version of the portaland later in the final product running for selected use cases in Europe (Albania, Switzerland, France). Satellite data processing algorithms have been further sharpened for the use in hydropower applications, including studies on evaluating different characteristics of total suspended matter influencing the signal, land cover mapping and evaporation rate calculations. The operational water quality processing routines by EOMAP have been enhanced further. For demonstration, data products from SMHI by its WW-HYPE hydrological service have been delivered for the geographic regions of the HYPOS case studies, and a first set of satellite data products have been produced for the use cases. For the re-analysis of service requirements and the related HYPOS Service Concept, the activities in the second phase focused on continuous analysis of the market as well as the consolidation and expansion of the service portfolio by designing improved and new functionalities such as the Blue Water Footprint calculations. User journeys and user workflows have been investigated, sharpening the underlying business concept focussing on two main workflow streams of hydropower stakeholder - design and operation – and an associated pricing schema has been developed. The outlook for the service beyond the project lifetime has been structured in a launch pad for each main identified stakeholder group.
For the further exploitation, the development of an upscalable solution was key, for which the award-winning new backend solution RastLess has been put in place. Furthjer algorithm and product adaptions such as the localization of models as well as investigation of highly turbid environments and the connected satellite products further pave teh way to a succesful market uptake. After the successful launch of the technical solution in form of the online available HYPOS tool, the developed service has been demonstrated in relevant hydropower applications for both main identified hydropower workflows, the design and operation phase. Validation of the products have been proven the consistency and accuracy of the new data. Focussing on the most promising use cases in Verbois and Banja, a pilot service assessment has identified the main benefits as well as some limitations still to overcome. With the analytic user experience assessment, systematic feedback on the useability of the tool led to concrete improvement suggestions to be implmeneted. Connected to the service and business concept, a straightforward Go-to-market-strategy has been realised in the dissemination and exploitation activities. The roll out of the components towards a sustainable business comprised dedicated marketing campaigns, webinars and user trainings, conference participation, but also many new business opportunities globally have been initiated. Professional sales materials such as the developed sales playbook have been an essential tool for the successful marketing of HYPOS.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Earth Observation
Throughout HYPOS, EOMAP further improved cutting-edge algorithms for harmonized multi-sensor high resolution water quality products. Especially the automated adaptation of the changing specific inherent optical properties (SIOPs) of water constituents will be improved. According to Brando et al. (2012 ) to address the challenges of the parameterization of physically based algorithms in optically complex waters, an adaptive implementation which iterates over a limited number of SIOPs is improving the accuracy the retrieval of water quality parameters. Improvements of adjancency correction and the use of latest multispectral sensor systems also have been implemented during teh HYPOS project.

Modelling
HYPOS allows expanding the existing operational setups beyond the state-of-the-art with assimilating EO for water quality modelling. Within HYPOS, EO is used to automatically update the model initial conditions using data assimilation techniques in a continuous way. Data assimilation provides substantial skill by reducing the initial conditions uncertainties.
Exploration of the three data streams (i.e. modelling data, EO, and in-situ observations) lead to innovative on-fly model calibration procedures. This process further improve the accuracy of the hydrological and sediment modelling at a global scale as well as increase the relevance and applicability of the modelling results to local users.

References
Brando, V.E. Dekker, A.G. Park, Y.J. and Schroeder, T., 2012. Adaptive semianalytical inversion of ocean color radiometry in optically complex waters. Applied Optics, 51(15), pp.2808-2833.

General concept of the HYPOS project