ADAPT-NP stakeholder needs and future directions workshop report: workshop held on Friday 27th September 2024 at UKCEH, Lancaster and University of Southampton

The ADAPT-NP project is funded by the NERC Innovation in Environmental Monitoring programme and seeks to develop, and field test a novel multi-nutrient sensor and integrate adaptive monitoring. The sensor will build on the single nutrient sensor developed by South West Sensors, using micro-fluidic technology to monitor Nitrate, Nitrite, Ammonium and Phosphate at almost real-time frequency. Adaptive monitoring will involve end-users determining triggers or environmental thresholds which increase the frequency of the nutrient measurements in a bid to improve “event” monitoring, reduce costs and improve data output quality. Finally, the project seeks to co-design sensor specifications with end-users, with this report detailing an important component of this work. An inception workshop was held on Friday 27th September with stakeholders from government bodies, water industry, aquaculture and research centres spanning research and practice in the field of water quality monitoring. This report details the discussions of that workshop which included the current experience of sensor end-users (stakeholders herein) and their thoughts on what the future challenges or opportunities in nutrient monitoring may be. The aim of this work was to identify the major challenges of those responsible for maintaining and reporting sensor water quality data to understand where innovation may be best placed and how the ADAPT-NP project may address these challenges.
Many end-users of water quality sensors reported common experiences in sensor maintenance and data usage. Currently, sensors are not deemed to produce data reliable enough to be used in compliance and statutory monitoring and cannot report absolute values due to the low sensitivity and range of some determinands (i.e. Ammonium) and difficulty in interpreting “noisy” data. As such, most stakeholders report or visualise data by summarising trends or changes over a threshold. The pressure on staff time from the activities involved in sensor use such as maintenance to data cleaning and analysis was raised throughout the workshop. There was a sense that whilst sensors are promoted as a tool to reduce staff pressures and costs, invariably this is not the case and a greater recognition of this is needed. There was also a demand to improve best practice and quality assurance particular in terms of data cleaning, which is often subjective and requires statistical expertise. Finally, users all agreed that sensors needed to be better able to integrate with other sensors, with a common goal to create sensor networks within a catchment. Often different sensors will have their own software which prevents integration of other sensors and their datasets, despite this being imperative for the holistic understanding of the environment. Specifically, there is a need to be able to view and analyse water quality data alongside hydrological and meteorological data in a more accessible manner so that managers can be more reactive to sensor output.