London suffers from many sources of pollution which significantly degrade the ecological value of its rivers. Despite this its rivers are highly valued by communities and the plight of rivers has increasingly become a political issue. Increasingly citizen scientists are monitoring the health of rivers and identifying pollution hotspots. This data is being used to identify nature based solutions to resolve the pollution. Blended finance approaches with public and private sectors have already started funding the delivery of solutions but the extent of this has been limited by the availability of evidence and information to quantify the issues and develop suitable Nature Based Solutions. 

This use case will enable a holistic monitoring and stewardship approach to enable control and management in Thames, London, one of the Europe’s largest urban river and catchment areas, towards achieving and recovering good status in the UK. The AQUAMON system will be used to inform interventions and policy to address challenges from wastewater, CSOs, urban and transport system runoff, population expansion, persistent and emerging pollution, plastics, encroachment into riparian zones, agricultural pressure, loss of biological diversity and biomass, and climate change. This use case involves the co-creation of observing system objectives and outputs with various river stakeholders, including charities, utilities, national regulators and agencies, local government, citizens, and citizen scientists, by integrating existing observing efforts and partnerships. The implementation of handheld microbiology analyzers amenable to community science monitoring, but also of more complex IoT-enabled analyzers will play a crucial role, incorporating physico-chemical multiparameter probes, in-situ microbiological labs for bacterial quantification, and LOC sensors for detecting microplastics, tire wear particles, iron, ammonium, nitrate, and phosphate, as well as at least two of PFOS, pharmaceuticals, or toxic metals. These sensors will be integrated with and benchmarked against existing observing technologies and campaigns, such as sampling, sensors, and citizen science initiatives. A cloud-based dashboard will be developed to integrate multi-parameter water quality data with existing national data systems, adhering to best practices in data security, access, and presentation. Additionally, robotics for remote monitoring of water bodies operating in 1) underwater domain, and 2) aerial environments, will facilitate the collection of data from challenging or inaccessible hard-to-reach areas. Tools for QMRA and QCRA will be applied and used to increase data interpretation and system understanding by assessing risk associated with microbiological and chemical contaminants at selected environmental endpoints, providing actionable information to minimize risks in treatment processes for agricultural irrigation and urban uses