MIRAC

Rivers are often impacted by companies located along their banks. As water flows downstream, it accumulates and transports chemicals discharged by these industries, along with other pollution sources. These pollutants degrade water quality and harm the surrounding ecosystems. After heavy rain episodes the river’s pollution peaks due to the saturation of the water treatment plants. We would mostly focus on these events. 

To monitor and control river pollution, we combine satellite data with sensors placed along the river. This fusion allows us to continuously monitor water quality while covering a wide range. By combining the measured data with our database, we can identify and trace pollution sources.

Our target customers include town halls and governments such as the Generalitat de Catalunya. We provide a service aligned with a recently approved law regarding industrial discharges into rivers.

In summary, MIRAC is a service that monitors the water quality of rivers and tracks the pollution sources. It also offers assessment and assistance 24h a day.

The team coordinator is Paula Stamati.

Our team is formed by 5 members. Paula Stamati, Aerospace Engineering student. She is the Chief Executive Officer of the company. Bingchi Zhu Lin, Aerospace Engineering student and Chief Financial Officer. Ricart Vilaró, Aerospace Engineering student, he is the Chief Strategy Officer. Joel Garcia, Aerospace Engineering student and Chief Technology Officer and Laia Delicado, Electronics Engineering student and Chief Human Resources Officer.

Our team requires expansion and new incorporations of chemistry, finances and marketing experts.

The prototype developed in the hackathon is a web. It can be visited through the following link: MIRAC website. 

The website shows the current status of the selected river. Graphics and boxes containing the sensors and satellite data are displayed on the dashboard page. To visualize all the information the user must log in (no mail or advertisement will be sent).

The challenge solved by MIRAC is the second one: Tracking and preventing water pollution. We mainly focus on pollution tracking through observation and correlation with databases. 

Our system detects the pollution once the damage is done, when it has already occurred. Nevertheless, we intend to sell our service to town halls and governments such as the Generalitat de Catalunya so they take legal action towards those responsible for polluting the river. We consider that an indirect form of prevention.

The satellite data would be mainly obtained through the Sentinel constellation and Landsat 8 satellite. The bands used would be: B2 (general water quality and turbidity), B3 (chlorophile), B4 (chlorophile, organic matter, sediments), Red Edge (B5 + B6 + B7) for eutrophication detection, NIR (sediments), SWIR (humidity and sediments, eliminating atmospheric interference).

The main band combinations that we would use would be: NDWI (water level), NDCI (chlorophile), NDTI (turbidity) and Red Reflectance (sediments)

The project utilizes frameworks and technologies such as Next.js, Flask, Docker, PostgreSQL, Google Cloud Compute Engine, and Cloudflare. It integrates APIs including Cassini OData and Cassini Statistical Data API, working with datasets on water treatment plants provided by the Agència Catalana d’Aigües.