Northumbrian Water trialling drones to test water quality in remote areas

The company's Project Kingfisher aims to improve water quality

North East water supplier Northumbrian Water is taking part in a trial that aims to use drones to measure water quality in remote locations.

The company is working with Makutu, RS Hydro and Skyports Drone Services on Project Kingfisher, a where a drone is used to collect and test water. Following initial test flights in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, the next phase of the project will see drones sent out around the North East to take samples.

Northumbrian Water currently relies on manual collection of water samples by staff, which can be challenging and even impossible in some locations. It’s hoped that using drones will allow water companies to respond quicker to potential issues and make it easier to gather water quality data.

The drone flights are conducted by Skyports Drone Services, with sensors lowered into sample points by a winch to test water quality and feed information back to Northumbrian Water. Project Kingfisher, which was given its name for the way the aircraft hover and dip in and out of water, has already seen strong results, the companies said.

John Edwards, technical policy manager at Northumbrian Water said: “Earlier in the year we carried out some initial testing, but the work we have conducted over the past month has been incredibly valuable for us and has helped us to understand the true benefits and opportunities this could unlock for the entire water industry in the future.

“We have been engaging with customers in the area here, and we know that water quality is an incredibly important topic at the moment – so it’s great that we are able to use these innovative trials to see how our regional coasts and rivers are monitored providing valuable data. This is an incredibly exciting project, and hopefully the success of these trials will enable us to carry out more on a larger scale in the future.”

James Sumsion, Chief Executive Officer of Makutu, added: “Finding innovative, low cost, environmentally sound and repeatable ways to obtain and analyse valuable water quality data is key to protecting and improving the environment in which we live. e are very pleased as to how these trials have progressed and look forward to significantly building out this capability within the next phase of the programme.”

Cheska Rojas, Project Kingfisher lead at Skyports Drone Services, said: “Water quality monitoring is a really compelling drone inspection use case, which we’re excited to be developing through Project Kingfisher. The latest phase of trials build on learnings gathered earlier in the year and is an important step towards scaling these services and eventually rolling them out in other parts of the UK. The work we’re doing here aims to bring tangible improvements to UK water environments and the communities that use them.”

The issue of water quality is high on the agenda due to public scrutiny of sewage leaks from suppliers. Earlier this year, Northumbrian Water was fined £17m by watchdog Ofwat over allowing sewage to be released into rivers and the sea.