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Oceans/
Specialized fields/
Coastal and bathing water qualityCoastal water, watched between the samples.
Bathing waters are sampled for bacteria a few times a season, but pollution after storms, low oxygen and algal blooms come and go between samples. Sondes at beaches and estuaries watch continuously and predict when water is likely to be unsafe, so authorities warn bathers and close shellfish beds in time.
Plan a deploymentHow it worksStation Builder- Industry
- Oceans
- Measurements
- 5
- Sources cited
- 4
Oceans · Coastal and bathing water quality
Between the samples
Bathing waters are sampled for bacteria a few times a season, and results arrive days later. Sewer overflows after heavy rain, low oxygen and algal blooms come and go between samples. Continuous sensing and a prediction model let authorities act while bathers and shellfish are still at risk.
What is measured
Water, rain and rivers
Sondes at beaches and estuaries measure temperature, salinity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll every ten minutes. Rain and river gauges in the catchment measure the inflow that carries pollution, and laboratory samples follow the monitoring calendar and every alert. Each reading carries its time and its quality flags.
- Instruments
- Multi-parameter sondes · Rain gauges · River gauges · Laboratory samples
The base node
A prediction for every beach
The node runs the short-term pollution model from rainfall, river flow and turbidity, flags low oxygen and algal signals, and publishes a daily prediction for each bathing water, so advice reaches the public before laboratory results do. Nothing is lost when a link drops; the node keeps it.
Radio and links
From the pier to the public
Sondes on piers and buoys near shore reach a gateway over a low-power link, and the node sends data and predictions over cellular. Predictions appear on beach signs and websites, and alerts reach farms and the authority at once. Each link is chosen for the place, not from a catalogue.
- Links
- LoRaWAN · Public cellular
How it works
From a storm to a beach advisory
A summer thunderstorm drops heavy rain on the catchment. River flow and turbidity at the estuary rise, and the model predicts a short pollution event at two beaches. Advisories go up that morning; samples taken that day confirm it, and the beaches reopen two days later.
From order to operation · Order
Scope the waters
The scope reads the authority’s bathing waters, shellfish zones, pollution sources and sample history. Nexus Observatory Inc. returns the sonde and gauge plan, the prediction model approach, public information and a price per site and per year. Every assumption in the scope is written down and priced.
Plan a deploymentFrom order to operation · Survey
Survey beaches and outfalls
Crews survey beaches, estuaries and outfalls with the authority: sonde positions, piers and buoy moorings, catchment gauges and gateway coverage. Pollution sources are mapped from the bathing water profiles. Every finding is kept with the site record for the crews who follow.
From order to operation · Permits
Consents and public notice
Maritime and harbour consents are obtained for buoys and piers, land owners approve gauges, and public information at beaches explains the monitoring. Every approval is kept with the site record. Approvals are tracked site by site, so nothing waits unseen.
From order to operation · Build
Build and calibrate
Sondes are calibrated against standards, antifouling fitted, radios paired, gauges tested, and the gateway and node configured and enrolled with their identities. The kit runs together before shipping. Test results travel with the kit to the site. Nothing ships until the whole kit has passed its tests together.
Open the Station BuilderFrom order to operation · Install
Install sondes and gauges
Crews fix sondes on piers and buoys, install rain and river gauges in the catchment, mount the gateway and node, and connect power and backhaul. Every point is photographed and recorded. The site record is updated before the crew leaves.
From order to operation · Commission
Commission against samples
Each node proves its identity. Sonde readings are compared with laboratory samples, oxygen with a reference meter, and the prediction model is checked against a season of past samples before predictions are published. Results are signed and kept with the site record.
From order to operation · Operate
Predict and warn
Authorities see water quality live and a daily prediction for each beach. After heavy rain, bathers are advised against swimming before samples confirm it, low oxygen alerts warn fish farms, and algal signals trigger shellfish testing. Reports for owners and funders come from the same record.
From order to operation · Maintain
Clean, calibrate, validate
Sondes are cleaned of fouling and recalibrated on the agreed plan, predictions are validated against every sample, models retrained each season, and software updated in rings. Every change is kept with the site record. Spares and procedures travel with the crews.
Book field servicesData products
For bathers, farms and authorities
The public and beach managers receive daily bathing water predictions; fish and shellfish farmers receive low oxygen and algal alerts; environment and health authorities receive water quality records; water utilities and regulators receive pollution event reports, each tied to site and time.
See the data productsEvidence
Managed to the directive
Bathing waters are managed under the bathing water directive and the recreational water guidelines, oxygen data pass the real-time quality checks, and rain is measured to the instrument guide. Every prediction is validated against samples and kept with its inputs.
- Drawn against
- Directive 2006/7/EC · WHO guidelines on recreational water quality · Manual for Real-Time Quality Control of Dissolved Oxygen Observations · WMO-No. 8
What you get
Ocean and coastal observing
Moored buoys, profiling floats, tide and wave gauges, coastal radar and AIS reception with quality-controlled feeds. Delivered as managed service and data licence, for ports, coastal agencies, offshore energy, fisheries. Scale: Coastline to basin. Service levels are written as numbers you can measure on your own dashboard.
Talk to salesNext step
Plan coastal and bathing water quality with us
Tell us the site, the measurements and the rules it answers to. We reply with a survey proposal, a design and a scope for coastal and bathing water quality. An engineer replies with a survey proposal and a scope, and the plan grows from one site to the network you need, at your pace.
Plan a deploymentOpen the Station BuilderOpen the Studio
01The place and its hazards
Where it runs, and what can go wrong.
Operating contextBathing waters are classified and managed under the bathing water directive, recreational water guidance sets the health framework, and dissolved oxygen and other ocean data are quality-controlled to real-time manuals. Short-term pollution after heavy rain is common and predictable from rainfall and river flows.
Hazards
- Sewer overflows after heavy rain
- Low oxygen that kills fish
- Harmful algal blooms that poison shellfish
- Samples that arrive after the bathers have gone
- Sondes fouled within weeks
02What must be measured
What, where, how often, and under which rules.
Each measurement names where it is taken, how often, and the public standard or regulation behind it. Numbers in the sources column open the cited source below.
| Measurement | Where | Cadence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature, salinity and turbidity | Sondes at beaches and estuaries | Every ten minutes | 12 |
| Dissolved oxygen | Sondes in estuaries and aquaculture zones | Every ten minutes | 3 |
| Chlorophyll and algal indicators | Fluorometers on sondes | Every ten minutes | 2 |
| Rainfall and river inflow | Gauges in the catchment | Every few minutes | 14 |
| Bacteria in water samples | Laboratory samples at bathing waters | On the monitoring calendar and after alerts | 1 |
03The observation stack
From one base unit to a network.
The same blocks at every scale: instruments and a base node, a site with its radio, a fleet run as one, and a network federated on the open protocol.
- 01
Base unit
A point: a multi-parameter sonde on a buoy or pier with a low-power radio.
Build a station → - 02
Site
A site: sondes at the beach and estuary, rain and river gauges, a gateway and node.
Plan a site → - 03
Fleet
Every bathing water and shellfish zone of an authority on one view.
Managed offers → - 04
Network
Authorities share water quality and predictions with the public and health agencies through open standards.
The open protocol →
- 01Water quality sonde
- 02Moored buoy
- 03Compact weather station
- 04Water level gauge
- 05LPWAN endpoint
- 06LoRaWAN gateway
- 07Micro node (Nano)
- 08Cellular modem/router
- 09Solar array
Radio and links
LoRaWAN
Sondes on piers and buoys near shore reach a gateway over a low-power link.
Radio and links
Public cellular
The node sends data and predictions over cellular.
Edge computeThe node runs the short-term pollution model from rainfall, river flow and turbidity, flags low oxygen and algal signals, and publishes a daily prediction for each bathing water.
PowerSondes and buoys run on batteries and small solar panels; the gateway and node run on mains at a harbour office or on solar.
04How it works
From the instrument to the product.
One observation’s path, tier by tier, with the interface on every link and a bill of materials below; then how the one node grows to a site, a fleet and federated networks.
Coastal and bathing water quality: data path
– of 08
01 Instruments Measurement with sensor identity andcalibration 02 Field radio 03 Gateway 04 Node – Wrap in an observation envelope with timequality– Measure quality and uncertainty, attachquality flags– Buffer locally (store-and-forward when thelink drops) 05 Backhaul Commit with transactional outbox andpublish, delivered at least once 06 Site Consumer inbox deduplicates and applieseach record once into governed data 07 Data store Governed product through API, map orexport, correction-aware 08 Products OGC SensorThings APInetCDF-CFMQTT 09 Power and structure Supplies 12 V DC to the field equipment 01 Water quality sonde SDI-12 · RS-485 · Ethernet 02 Moored buoy RS-485 · SDI-12 03 Compact weather station SDI-12 · RS-485 · Ethernet 04 Water level gauge SDI-12 · RS-485 · Ethernet 05 LPWAN endpoint Analogue I/O · SDI-12 · RS-485 06 LoRaWAN gateway Ethernet · RF · GNSS antenna 07 Micro node (Nano) Ethernet · USB · Analogue I/O ·RS-485 · CAN 08 Cellular modem/router Ethernet · USB · RS-232 Site MQTT 5 with Sparkplug B Governed data store Versioned, correction-aware Daily bathing water predictions Low oxygen and algal alerts Water quality records Pollution event reports 09 Solar array RS-485 SDI-12 SDI-12 SDI-12 SDI-12 LoRaWAN Ethernet Ethernet LTE/NR| Item | Equipment | Data ports | Protocols | Power in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Water quality sondeMulti-parameter sonde for temperature, conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen and turbidity. | SDI-12RS-485Ethernet | SDI-12, Modbus, MQTT 5, OGC SensorThings API | 12 V DC |
| 02 | Moored buoyMoored buoy platform carrying met-ocean sensors, with solar power and satellite or cellular telemetry. | RS-485SDI-12 | MQTT 5, OGC SensorThings API | 12 V DC |
| 03 | Compact weather stationAll-in-one or compact station for temperature, humidity, pressure, wind and rain at a site. | SDI-12RS-485Ethernet | SDI-12, Modbus, MQTT 5, OGC SensorThings API | 12 V DC |
| 04 | Water level gaugeRadar, pressure or float gauge for river, lake, reservoir or tide level. | SDI-12RS-485Ethernet | SDI-12, Modbus, MQTT 5, OGC SensorThings API | 12 V DC |
| 05 | LPWAN endpointBattery-powered endpoint on LoRaWAN, NB-IoT or LTE-M that carries one or more sensors. | Analogue I/OSDI-12RS-485 | LoRaWAN, OMA LwM2M, CoAP | Internal battery, Energy harvesting |
| 06 | LoRaWAN gatewayMulti-channel LoRaWAN gateway that forwards uplinks to a network server and schedules downlinks within duty limits. | EthernetRFGNSS antenna | LoRaWAN, MQTT 5 | PoE, 12 V DC |
| 07 | Micro node (Nano)Single-board or module-class node for sensor sites, gateways and low-power deployments. | EthernetUSBAnalogue I/ORS-485CAN | MQTT 5, OMA LwM2M, CoAP | PoE, 12 V DC, USB PD |
| 08 | Cellular modem/routerLTE or NR modem or router that uses a public carrier or private network as backhaul. | EthernetUSBRS-232 | 3GPP E-UTRA air interface, 3GPP NR air interface, OMA LwM2M | 12 V DC, PoE |
| 09 | Solar arrayPV modules with charge controller sized to the site’s load and climate. | RS-485 | Modbus | — |
How it scales
01 Instruments Arbitrary qualified sensors and instruments whosemeasurements are ingested with calibration, units,geometry, time, custody and uncertainty. ×n 02 Node The minimum useful deployable unit: server, ruggedappliance, radio node, sensor gateway, satelliteterminal, AI, scientific, vehicle or virtual node. Node Node agent 03 Site The minimum independently operable localgovernance and failure domain: one or more nodesplus local network, identity, policy, evidence,storage, products and operator surfaces.SITE
Node Node Node ×n 04 Cluster An optional scale or specialisation domain forscheduling, shared storage, accelerators or datalocality.CLUSTER
×n 05 Fleet Coordinates plans, acknowledgements,convergence evidence, update campaigns andcorrection propagation across nodes and sites.FLEET
Fleet controller ×n 06 Federation An exchange of products, capabilities, events orwork across approved, independently administeredtrust domains, using explicit trust, policy,data-locality, version and correction contracts.TRUST DOMAIN
TRUST DOMAIN
TRUST DOMAIN
×n Verifier Applications Data in the field Telemetry Control Data upstream Control Data upstream Control Exchange Evidence Events Exchange- Data in the field
- MQTT 5 with Sparkplug B; connectors for LoRaWAN, OPC UA and instrument buses.
- Telemetry
- OpenTelemetry OTLP.
- Control
- TLS 1.3 with mutual authentication; protobuf messages over gRPC or HTTP/2.
- Data upstream
- At-least-once publication with repeat-safe keys over the control channel or NATS JetStream; QUIC MAY be used on lossy links.
- Evidence
- DSSE-signed in-toto statements; SLSA provenance; SCITT transparency receipts.
- Events
- Event envelopes mapped to CloudEvents 1.0; channels described in AsyncAPI 3.
- Exchange
- OpenAPI 3.1; the OGC API family; SensorThings; STAC; WIS 2.0.
05From order to operation
Every step, from the first call to a running site.
The same crew and the same record carry the work from scope to maintenance.
- 01 Order
Scope the waters
The scope reads the authority’s bathing waters, shellfish zones, pollution sources and sample history. Nexus Observatory Inc. returns the sonde and gauge plan, the prediction model approach, public information and a price per site and per year. Every assumption in the scope is written down and priced. 1
- 02 Survey
Survey beaches and outfalls
Crews survey beaches, estuaries and outfalls with the authority: sonde positions, piers and buoy moorings, catchment gauges and gateway coverage. Pollution sources are mapped from the bathing water profiles. Every finding is kept with the site record for the crews who follow. 1
- 03 Permits
Consents and public notice
Maritime and harbour consents are obtained for buoys and piers, land owners approve gauges, and public information at beaches explains the monitoring. Every approval is kept with the site record. Approvals are tracked site by site, so nothing waits unseen.
- 04 Build
Build and calibrate
Sondes are calibrated against standards, antifouling fitted, radios paired, gauges tested, and the gateway and node configured and enrolled with their identities. The kit runs together before shipping. Test results travel with the kit to the site. Nothing ships until the whole kit has passed its tests together. 3
- 05 Install
Install sondes and gauges
Crews fix sondes on piers and buoys, install rain and river gauges in the catchment, mount the gateway and node, and connect power and backhaul. Every point is photographed and recorded. The site record is updated before the crew leaves.
- 06 Commission
Commission against samples
Each node proves its identity. Sonde readings are compared with laboratory samples, oxygen with a reference meter, and the prediction model is checked against a season of past samples before predictions are published. Results are signed and kept with the site record. 13
- 07 Operate
Predict and warn
Authorities see water quality live and a daily prediction for each beach. After heavy rain, bathers are advised against swimming before samples confirm it, low oxygen alerts warn fish farms, and algal signals trigger shellfish testing. Reports for owners and funders come from the same record. 2
- 08 Maintain
Clean, calibrate, validate
Sondes are cleaned of fouling and recalibrated on the agreed plan, predictions are validated against every sample, models retrained each season, and software updated in rings. Every change is kept with the site record. Spares and procedures travel with the crews.
06Data products and integration
What it delivers, to whom, and into which systems.
Data products
- Daily bathing water predictionsThe public and beach managers
- Low oxygen and algal alertsFish and shellfish farmers
- Water quality recordsEnvironment and health authorities
- Pollution event reportsWater utilities and regulators
Integration
- Public informationPredictions appear on beach signs and websites.
- SamplingAlerts schedule extra samples.
- UtilitiesOverflow events link to the utility’s records.
Exchanged through OGC SensorThings API, netCDF-CF, MQTT.
07Questions buyers ask
Before you scope it.
Does it replace bacteria samples?
No. Samples classify the water; sensing predicts between them.
How is pollution predicted?
From rainfall, river flow and turbidity, checked against past samples.
What about fouling?
Antifouling and cleaning on schedule keep sondes honest.
Can farms use it?
Yes, for oxygen and algal alerts.
08Resources
The sources behind this page.
Public standards, regulations and guidance, cited where they apply. Each applies only where its jurisdiction or scope does.
- 1Directive 2006/7/EC concerning the management of bathing water qualityEuropean Union · 2006
- 2WHO guidelines on recreational water quality, Volume 1: coastal and fresh watersWorld Health Organization · 2021
- 3Manual for Real-Time Quality Control of Dissolved Oxygen Observations (QARTOD)U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System
- 4WMO-No. 8: Guide to Instruments and Methods of ObservationWorld Meteorological Organization
09Related
Use cases and solutions.
SolutionOcean and coastal observing
Moored buoys, profiling floats, tide and wave gauges, coastal radar and AIS reception with quality-controlled feeds.Solutions for oceans →SolutionEnvironmental and permit monitoring
Emissions, water quality, noise and dust monitoring for permit conditions, with traceable calibration and evidence bundles.Solutions for oceans →SolutionSensing as a Service
Observation networks designed, installed, operated and maintained for a monthly fee: weather, hydromet, air, seismic and environmental stations, with data delivered under a licence.Solutions for oceans →10Oceans: specialized fields
Other fields of this industry.
Specialized fieldSea level and storm surge
Tide gauges with land-motion GNSS and weather at harbours and coasts, giving real-time surge for warnings and long sea-level records tied to the land they stand on.The full field →Specialized fieldWaves and coastal buoys
Moored buoys that measure waves, wind and sea temperature off ports and coasts, for safe navigation, coastal design and the warnings that keep people off dangerous seas.The full field →Specialized fieldUnderwater noise
Hydrophone moorings that measure ship noise, piling and other sound in the sea, for marine protection duties, offshore construction and the animals that depend on hearing.The full field →Bring us the site.
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