Berwick and Blyth areas included in Northumbrian Water drone test flights for water quality

The skies above Berwick and Blyth (and Bishop Auckland in County Durham) will be the first to play host to the Speedbird Aero aircraft, which have a wingspan of 1.6m, as part of phase one of a series of flight tests.

Northumbrian Water is exploring the use of drone technology to carry out at scale, real-time water quality assessments in partnership with cloud data experts Makutu and Skyports Drone Services.

The drones will use sensors, AI and data analytics and the initiative is named Project Kingfisher by the partner organisations for the way they will hover and dip in and out of water. It will explore how and what data the drones will collect to help Northumbrian Water respond quickly to any potential issues.

Currently, the company can only survey water quality by sending its people to manually take water samples from sites – which can prove difficult when they are a long distance away, in very rural areas, or during bad weather.

When it is at the sampling site, the drone will hover while a number of key water quality tests are performed, before moving onto its next sample site.

Meanwhile, the data it has collected will be fed back into Northumbrian Water for analysis in near real-time.

Richard Warneford, Wastewater Director at Northumbrian Water, said: “We’re just as passionate as our customers about protecting the environment and improving river and coastal water quality, so to have these test flights underway is really exciting.”