The project Eaugure
Project presentation
The degradation of water quality in natural and man-made lakes has impacts on goods and services on health and human activities. The pollution at the origin of this degradation can have as a result of either events that are difficult to control, related to meteorology and/or human activities, or recurring events that are to be linked with activities on the watersheds of water bodies. Some lakes are official swimming sites and as such, controls are carried out periodically during the summer period by the Regional Health Agencies (ARS). In this context, the analyses may include a pollution but it is generally observed a posteriori because of the delays of the analyses and the Meanwhile, bathers are in contact with poor quality water. In the other lakes, the investigations are generally conducted following complaints from users, associations and analyses are carried out, in the best case, when the pollution is well established. Bathing managers and/or operators of a reservoir must be able to ensure good water quality for users but are often helpless in the face of pollution problems, which are often very complex. It therefore seems essential to develop tools for measures that will allow them to be able to:
- Predict risk episodes
- Monitor water quality in real time Make this information available to users
- Accumulate data that will eventually make it possible to remove pollution
Context, target market(s), issues and problems addressed
In 2013, the companies ATHOS ENVIRONNEMENT and VEODIS 3D applied for and obtained a FRI Cluster 1 from the
Region to carry out a market study to identify market potential, identify competitors
and to survey potential customers about their expectations in terms of water quality monitoring
of swimming.
This market study was carried out by ACTEMIS. The results are very encouraging since it
the following points emerge:
- Number of potential customers: 1,325 People in charge of fresh / inland water bathing waters,
- Maximum market potential for bathing water quality in fresh / inland water: 33.125 million euros per year
- Competition:
- 3 international groups, generalists in the water sector,
- no engineering firm specialising in aquatic engineering offering real-time (indoor) water quality management/monitoring services has been identified.
- Existing offers on this theme:
- Positioning in the water quality management process: VEOLIA offers a service to support ARS and approved analysis laboratories, while SUEZ and SAUR offer a global service and have their own laboratories
- Indoor bathing water quality: The vast majority of bathing water quality monitoring offers proposed by the stakeholders analysed are adapted for coastal bathing areas. Only one offer: OSER, proposed by SAUR, has been identified for the creation of swimming profiles for indoor areas.
- Cyanobacteria : No solution has been identified to visualize the horizontal and vertical distribution of cyanobacteria, representative of the true concentration of cyanobacteria in a bathing water body.
The firm reached the following conclusions:
"The EAUGURE project is part of an innovation process and presents concrete economic opportunities and
relevant to the needs of the market it addresses and the upcoming regulatory changes. »
The choices and technical means considered are relevant to the technical benchmark of competing offers
most relevant. They even provide added value to ATHOS ENVIRONNEMENT's offer, differentiating it from other products.
from the competition: solution allowing the anticipation of contamination risks and continuous and timely monitoring
of water quality, by rainfall modelling and field sensors vs. competing solutions based on
only on the anticipation of risks by weather forecasting.
Project positioning
Bathing water quality is now managed through bathing and action plans. However, events that are difficult to control can occur temporarily and locally lead to degradation of this quality, which will be observed a posteriori by analyses whose results are often known a few days later and therefore too late if pollution is found. These random events are:
- Meteorology: heavy rains can cause sewer overflows and watershed leaching
- Human activities (failure of WWTPs, release of unscheduled hydroelectric dams, etc.)