ARCANE

💎 Idea

The Problem: Water utility companies suffer from "time blindness" when it comes to unpredictable, toxic blooms like golden algae. Current monitoring systems rely heavily on lagging indicators: high-latency laboratory analysis and point-source data from fixed physical sensors. Because operators do not know exactly when a toxic wave will hit or how long it will last, they face a "zero-response-time" scenario. This forces them into reactive, emergency chemical treatments, driving up operational costs.

The Solution: ARCANE is a real-time predictive monitoring model for river systems. Our pipeline computes a cyanobacteria bloom risk score for specific river segments and visualizes the situation on an interactive Leaflet map. To achieve this, we fuse Sentinel-2 satellite imagery with hydrological station data from IMGW-PIB (Institute of Meteorology and Water Management). We further enhance our model by integrating laboratory data from MPWiK SA in Wrocław and in-situ sensors provided by Waterly.

🛰️ EU space technologies

Our solution relies on the continuous processing of optical satellite data from the Sentinel-2 mission of the Copernicus programme.

• We utilize the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE) to directly fetch specific high- and medium-resolution bands (B03, B04, B05, B08, B11, B12) via the OData Nodes API.
• Our data pipeline processes these bands to extract critical indices such as NDWI (Normalized Difference Water Index) and NDCI, allowing us to compute chlorophyll density and turbidity.
• Sentinel-2 integration completely eliminates the lack of spatial situational awareness. Without satellite data, the movement and evolution of a toxic bloom remain invisible until it reaches a physical sensor. ARCANE tracks the threat from space, acting as a true early warning system.
• To compensate for days with missing satellite coverage, we mitigate the data gap by leveraging robust downstream hydrological sources.

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Backend: Python, FastAPI, Uvicorn, SQLite

• Frontend: Vanilla JS, Leaflet (for interactive topographic and risk mapping)

• Geospatial & Data Processing: Rasterio, Shapely, PyProj, NumPy

• Space Data Integrations: Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE), OData Nodes API

💧 EU Space for Water

ARCANE directly tackles the challenge of protecting our water resources and optimizing drinking water management by:

• Providing early warnings for toxic blooms that devastate natural river ecosystems, including natural biological filters like mussels.

1. Lowering the amount of invasive chemical products needed for early-stage water purification.

• Empowering utility companies with smart, non-price management measures that can help save up to 50% of abstracted water in Europe by preventing contamination-driven shutdowns.

🤼 Team

• Mikołaj Bakalarz (CEO & Full-Stack Software Engineer): The architect of the core system. He oversees the backend infrastructure, database management, and ensures seamless integration between the complex data extraction pipelines and the user-facing application.
• Kamil Wolbach (CTO & GIS / Satellite Data Expert): The mastermind behind the spatial data. Leveraging a strong academic background in geodesy and GIS, he designed and executed the Sentinel-2 data extraction pipelines, handling everything from indices computations to spatial vectorization and cartographic presentation on Leaflet.
• Mikołaj Ambroży (CDO): The design specialist. He translates complex satellite analytics into an intuitive UI/UX, ensuring that operators can easily interpret dynamic risk maps and charts.
• Adam Tyszkowski (CMO): The business and strategy lead. He defines the market entry strategy, analyzes TAM/SAM/SOM metrics, and builds the B2G/B2B roadmap targeting water utility companies and local governments.