Researchers at the Department of Computer Engineering’s Dipper Lab at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have developed an automated monitoring system to detect real-time river contamination, offering an early-warning mechanism to protect local communities and utility providers.
The project, dubbed GalamSense, addresses the environmental and public health risks caused by industrial discharge and illegal small-scale mining, locally known as “galamsey”.
Currently at the working demo stage, physical sensors transmit live water quality metrics to a cloud dashboard ahead of a final prototype deployment.
Nathaniel Klobodu, a Research Associate at the department, explained in an interview with Kumasi FM’s Elisha Adarkwah that traditional visual monitoring leaves communities exposed to invisible hazards.
”We usually find out too late about it,” Mr Klobodu said, highlighting, “Usually, we see that a river is polluted when it’s brown; it has changed colour. But what about those rivers that are still clear but have chemicals in them? So we want to be able to detect those industrial chemicals and alert the communities so that they can avoid those river bodies and use the stored water that they have.”
To reach diverse demographics, he said, the platform uses a two-tier communication system, explaining that at the community level, automated SMS messages deliver direct, simplified instructions, such as directives to avoid or boil river water, to residents.
At the institutional level, Mr Klobodu emphasised that a dedicated cloud dashboard provides water treatment companies and regulatory agencies with analytical data to project purification costs and adapt operations.
”When we need to use polluted water, we have to go through the mitigation process,” Mr Klobodu noted, stating, “And sometimes if the pollution level is going to be high, it’s going to need more money to purify it. So we want to be able to communicate the level of pollution to companies and bodies that are into the purification of the water for domestic and industrial activities.”
The innovation comes as illegal mining severely degrades the nation’s freshwater resources.
Data from the Water Resources Commission (WRC) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Water Research Institute (CSIR-WRI) indicate that over 60 per cent of the nation’s water bodies are polluted or severely degraded.
Furthermore, Ghana Water Company reports that heavy contamination, including runoff containing mercury, cyanide, and lead, has driven turbidity levels up to 14,000 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) across major basins such as the Pra, Ankobra, Offin, Birim, and Densu.
The extreme siltation frequently exceeds conventional treatment capacity, inflating operational purification costs up to tenfold.
”We have a working demo,” Mr Klobodu said, explaining, “We have the physical device, and we also have a cloud dashboard where the data goes and where our partners can view the data from anywhere. Our final prototype is yet to come out.”
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