AquaSync

The problem:

Copernicus satellites are a powerful tool for identifying macro-level water quality issues, but when it comes to small-scale chemical spills or early-stage algal blooms, they suffer from "pixel pollution". 

At the same time, local environmental authorities lack budgets for dense IoT sensor networks - yet citizens (anglers, kayakers, hikers) are already on the ground spotting pollution daily, with no unified way to report it.

Solution

AquaSync tackles this problem by building a "Space-to-Citizen" feedback loop. 

A daily automated pipeline ingests Sentinel-2/3 imagery to generate a Suspicion Map highlighting turbidity spikes and potential algal blooms. Citizens can report anomalies in real time via a lightweight mobile PWA - snapping a live photo that is automatically tagged with Galileo-verified GNSS coordinates and a timestamp. 

On the authority side, a React dashboard fuses both layers: when a citizen report lands inside a satellite-flagged anomaly zone, it is automatically escalated to a High-Priority Alert, giving water managers the confidence to deploy testing teams exactly where they're needed.

EU space technologies

Copernicus / Sentinel-2 & Sentinel-3 - The backbone of the anomaly detection layer. 

AquaSync uses the Sentinel Hub Processing API to compute NDWI (Normalized Difference Water Index) and turbidity indices over a defined bounding box each morning. This produces a daily Suspicion Map - a raster layer highlighting zones of abnormal water quality that would be invisible to ground-level observers alone.

Galileo / GNSS High-Accuracy PositioningUsed as the anti-fraud and verification layer on the citizen reporting side. 

The mobile PWA requests the highest-accuracy GNSS signal available on the user's device (targeting <5 m variance). Critically, the app enforces live photo capture only and the Galileo-derived coordinates and timestamp are embedded in the submission payload. This makes each report cryptographically tied to a real place and moment.

EU Space for Water

Challenge addressed: Challenge #2 - Tracking and preventing water pollution.

AquaSync contributes to protecting water resources in three concrete ways:

1. Earlier detection - By correlating citizen ground-truth reports with daily satellite anomaly maps, the system can confirm a pollution event within hours rather than waiting for scheduled water-testing team visits.

2. Better resource allocation - Regional water managers currently send testing teams based on intuition or scheduled rotation. The fused High-Priority Alert system gives them a data-driven, spatially verified signal, cutting wasted deployments and reducing response times 

3. Scalable coverage at low cost - Dense IoT sensor networks are expensive. AquaSync uses existing citizen presence near water bodies as a zero-cost sensor layer, validated by EU space infrastructure rather than hardware. This makes it accessible to under-resourced municipal authorities and NGOs.

Team

Volodymr Vorobiov - Data Engineer. Responsible for the data pipeline, satellite data processing, API integration, and database management (PostGIS); Designer/UX - Responsible for the citizen reporter interface and admin dashboard UX.

Mykhailo Ladyk - Product Strategist & Presenter. Drives the business case, market positioning, and stakeholder narrative. Ensures the product vision stays aligned with real-world needs of water authorities and NGOs.

Ihor Vytvytskyi - Full Stack Developer. Experienced in React. Leads frontend dashboard and PWA implementation.

Viktor Hutsuliak — AI/GIS Engineer responsible for managing the Sentinel Hub data pipeline, executing spatial queries in PostGIS, and implementing data fusion workflows.