FOSS4G SOTM Oceania 2024

Aquawatch Data Systems: a cloud-based solution for water quality monitoring and forecasting
11-07, 11:50– (Australia/Hobart), Main Auditorium

This talk focuses on using open-source software components to power the science of water quality monitoring and forecasting. The components used derive both from scientific / research grade software and state-of-the-art OSS geospatial area. How these interact and result in an operational system will be discussed.


Water quality monitoring and forecasting is crucial in sustaining the ecological balance of Earth. The process necessitates large-scale access to comprehensive time series data derived from earth observation, as well as substantial computational power capable of running complex physics-based and deep learning models.

This talk introduces a modern cloud-based information system architecture, AquaWatch Data Systems. Built upon the framework of CSIRO's EASI technology and consisting of 1000's of open-source components put together, AquaWatch provides an innovative and efficient solution to the manifold challenges posed by water quality monitoring. In addition to EASI’s core catalogue of curated earth observation data and scalable compute, GPU and storage capabilities, ADS provides access to atmospherically corrected data, specialized aquatic applications and a data lake of in situ observations of water quality alongside remote sensing observations.

ADS platform has been successfully demonstrated in 3-4 pilot projects across Australia and a similar number globally spanning Malaysia, Vietnam, Italy and the US, showcasing its feasibility and efficacy. The system efficiently collocates around 1000 data streams of in situ observations with petabytes of earth observation data from Sentinel, Landsat and Hyperspectral sensors easily accessible via the Open Data Cube, hence facilitating accurate modelling and forecasting. AquaWatch’s deployment on a cloud-based platform enhances scalability, ensures ease of access, and promises substantial computational capacity needed to run advanced physics based and deep learning models.

This talk will focus on the Open Source Geospatial and Geospatial adjacent software stacks that let ADS function and discuss how they relate to each other.

In conclusion, AquaWatch Data Systems allows development of practical advances in water quality monitoring, modelling and forecasting, offering valuable guidance in water resource management.

Tisham is a Senior Engineer at CSIRO Space and Astronomy division. Previously he held similar roles in various government agencies, private sector companies and startups. He has been pushing pixels since 2004 when he got started using medical imaging devices in Singapore. Since then he has had the priviledge of working with various space agencies such as NASA, DLR, JAXA, CNES etc. and lived through the explosion of publicly available satellite imagery.