TerraSip

The Problem

Three days into a mountain hike, your water is gone. The stream ahead looks perfect, but is it safe? Agricultural runoff, recent floods, or invisible algal blooms could make it toxic—and you have no way to know. 

This is the reality for millions of outdoor enthusiasts. Traditional solutions are inadequate: bottled water is heavy and wasteful, filters miss chemical toxins, and "gut feeling" is dangerous. The irony? Copernicus satellites already monitor every water body on Earth, detecting contamination and algal blooms in real-time. This data is free and constantly updated, yet it remains inaccessible to the person standing at the water's edge. 

Today’s satellite tools are built for researchers with high-tech software, not for hikers who need an answer in five seconds, sometimes without an internet connection. TerraSip bridges this gap, translating orbital intelligence into life-saving insights at the point of need.

Our Solution

The App

A mobile-first web application that uses Galileo-enabled multi-GNSS positioning to pinpoint your exact location, then cross-references it against the latest satellite-derived water quality data for nearby water bodies. The result is a simple, color-coded rating — Excellent, Good, Poor, or Unsafe — backed by a Water Quality Index computed from chlorophyll-a concentration, turbidity levels, dissolved organic matter, atmospheric pollution deposition, and precipitation anomalies. Users also see an interactive map of nearby sources, real-time contamination alerts, historical quality trends, and plain-language explanations of why a source is rated the way it is.

The Smart Bottle

A companion hardware device, a smart water bottle with a capacitive water sensor and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) built into a food-grade silicone cap. When you fill the bottle from any source, the sensor detects the water and triggers communication with your phone. The app uses your phone’s location to match against pre-cached satellite data and instantly returns a safety rating. No internet needed. No chemical test strips. Just fill, and know.

Future versions integrate Galileo GNSS for sub-meter precision, enabling fully autonomous, high-accuracy water source identification.

Offline-First Architecture

The heavy satellite processing happens before you leave, not when you need water. Before a trip, the app downloads a lightweight water risk map for your route or region (10–50 MB per area). On the road, the phone performs a local spatial query against the cached data using only Galileo positioning. The system works entirely offline, syncing fresh satellite passes opportunistically when connectivity returns.

Tools

• Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, Sentinel-5P (Copernicus APIs): multi-spectral satellite data for detecting water presence and estimating quality indicators
• C3S & CEMS: climate and emergency data layers providing context on droughts, floods, and precipitation anomalies affecting water safety
• Offline vector tiles (10–50MB/region): on-device maps enabling navigation to water sources without internet connectivity
• ESP32 smart bottle with BLE (no GPS): low-power, event-driven device that activates on water detection, communicates with the mobile app, and integrates UV sterilization and filtration for on-the-spot water treatment
• WQI scoring engine: multi-factor model combining NDWI, chlorophyll-a, turbidity, CDOM, NO₂, and precipitation anomalies to classify water as safe, risky, or unsafe
• Galileo GNSS (future development): sub-meter precision positioning for accurate water source identification in advanced versions

Our Team

We are Computer Science students at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, combining skills in software engineering, product design, and business strategy.

Ana – product design & visual identity

Bia – backend development & Copernicus integration

Anda – presentation design & Galileo research

Raluca – business strategy & frontend support

Presentation delivered by Raluca & Bia.

We collaborated across all stages, from idea to implementation. As hiking enthusiasts, we are closely connected to nature and driven to help preserve it.

We deliberately designed a product with strong market appeal, recognizing that adoption is key to impact. By creating something people genuinely want to use and buy, we aim to build a scalable model, one that goes beyond consumer value and evolves into a solution that expands access to safe drinking water for everyone.