NERC-NSFGEO SMARTWATER: Diagnosing controls of pollution hot spots and hot moments and their impact on catchment water quality

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

This is a project jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Upon successful joint determination of an award recommendation, each Agency funds the proportion of the budget that supports scientists at institutions in their respective countries. River water pollution has consequences for human and environmental health, economic prosperity, and water security. Recent advances in sensing and data science provide unprecedented opportunities for a step change in the approaches used to identify and understand sources, dynamics, and consequences of water pollution in complex landscapes. The proposed “SmartWater” project will generate innovations in experimental analytics, data science and mathematical modelling to yield new mechanistic understanding of the dynamic drivers of multi-contaminant pollution hotspots (locations) and hot moments (times) in a changing water world. SmartWater will integrate environmental sensing, machine learning, and mathematical modelling with stakeholders' catchment knowledge to transform the way we diagnose, understand, predict, and manage water pollution hotspots and hot moments. SmartWater will provide the basis for improved decision-support and water quality management frameworks, which will be developed with and implemented by partner stakeholders. SmartWater’s multi-disciplinary, NERC-NSF collaborative team will unravel the complex physical, chemical, and biological controls that determine water quality by combining next-generation water pollution monitoring, big data analysis, numerical models, and catchment knowledge. This new capability to diagnose and predict the emergence of water pollution hotspots and hot moments, and outcomes for catchment water quality dynamics and water quality management will be demonstrated at experimental observatories in the United Kingdom and the United States. SmartWater will work with stakeholder communities to co-create pathways for successfully implementing practical and policy-relevant water quality management practices. SmartWater will directly support design and implementation of future management strategies in the face of regional climate and environmental change by determining the impact of non-linear pollution hotspots and hot moments on catchment water quality dynamics. This will improve understanding of changing local exposures in river basins as well as large-scale mass fluxes of pollutants and their downstream export. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.