Blooming Algae! Changing Operational Decisions with Algal Bloom Predictive Intelligence
How might we maximise the value of predictive technologies to enable effective interventions against algal blooms impacting UK water supplies?
A Years Worth of Work in a Week (YWIW) – Accelerating operational value 10 times faster!
Algal blooms are becoming a serious operational threat for water companies. Blooms can rapidly degrade raw water quality, disrupt treatment processes, increase chemical use and cost, and in severe cases, jeopardise supply continuity and compliance. Yet forecasting these events remains difficult because the drivers - reservoir stratification, river inflows, nutrient loading, and weather patterns - interact in complex ways. With climate change and population growth intensifying pressure on raw water sources, this risk is only increasing.
Water companies need a step change: integrate disparate datasets and predictive intelligence that provides early warning and enables proactive operational decisions. Our Algal Bloom Predictive Insights model brings these fragmented datasets together to give a unified, system‑level view of bloom formation supporting earlier intervention, smarter treatment planning and more resilient supply operations.
Building on May’s ESW Innovation day, we look to accelerate our understanding of the value of predictive modelling and associated data by the power of 10 in line with the theme of the Festival anniversary.
We will also ask how we might integrate and adopt it into Operations and how it might scale both organisationally and across the industry 10 times quicker.
Participants will collaborate through a mix of creative workshop activities, structured exploration sessions and real-world case presentations and discussions with below representing a guide to what will be covered each day:
|
Day/Sessions |
Session focus |
Examples of activities and questions to answer |
|
Mon (PM) |
Introduction |
Unpacking the challenges and defining an algal bloom. |
|
Tue (AM/PM) |
Business and User needs
|
Defining requirements, what we may do differently with this capability (e.g. what would we do if we understood the root cause of an algal bloom?) and how we can turn this into trusted operational actions. |
|
Wed (AM/PM) |
Data, Scenarios & Actions |
What can we learn from the data, how we could use predictive insights in different scenarios and refining the best way for uses to integrate into their workflow. |
|
Thur (AM/PM) |
Benefits, Scalability & Adoption |
What does success look like from a business perspective, how we can enable scalability of the solution and maximise industry/business/user adoption. |
Our aim is to act as an enabler for Water Companies and other Stakeholders, empowering them with the confidence to move from a reactive to a more proactive / preventative stance to mitigate the risk that algal blooms pose to Drinking Water Supplies.
This sprint will appeal to anyone who is affected by algal blooms or whose focus is on providing safe, high quality drinking water.
We’re keen to hear from a range of roles and perspectives so that we can maximise the operational value and benefits from this initiative. This includes, but is not exclusive to, people working in the following fields:
- Other Water Companies
- Drinking Water Supply
- Drinking and Catchment Water Quality
- Catchment management
- Laboratory sampling and analysis
- Water Resources
- Data Science, Modelling and Architecture
- Operational and Asset Maintenance
- Tactical and Strategic Planning
- Regulators