GCC’s Coastlines Get a Real-Time Monitoring Upgrade

Tim (0:00)

This is the Morning Drive at Mira Business FM. The Gulf Coastlines are under growing pressure from development, from industry, from environmental risk, of course. And a new partnership between Ecocoast and Xylem is bringing real-time environmental monitoring technology to projects across the GCC. And that includes ports, the desalination and the power plants as well. Joining us is Joachim de Jenlis, he is the CEO of Ecocoast, hopefully to discuss what this means for protecting the region's marine environment. Joachim, it's good to meet you.

Joachim de Jenlis (0:38)

Good to meet you, Tim. Thanks for having me.

Tim (0:40)

Good to have you here. So let's start with this partnership. It's a new partnership. You're bringing environmental monitoring to the GCC. Why is this particularly important right now?

Joachim de Jenlis (0:50)

Well, it's an important partnership for us because for many years, actually, Ecocoast operates here since 2009 So for quite some years, we've been at the forefront of protecting the coastlines of the Gulf States, and in particular, the UAE. And when we deliver protective solutions for the coastlines, we were missing one element, which is monitoring.

If I can give you an example, I'm sure you've been walking on the beach or you've been going to the beach in the UAE, and you could see a lot of developments. Islands which are built or hotels which are developed or marinas, all sorts of developments.

All these developments needs to have environmental permits in order to ensure that at the same time that they are developing, they are protecting and they are taking care of the marine environment. That means using protection solutions such as silk curtains, those barriers that you can see which are deployed to actually contain the turbidity. For us, with Xylem now, we are able to actually put some buoys, which are going to measure the level of turbidity in the water outside of this protection and identify if there is any leakage and ensure that actually the water stays clean during the construction.

Tim (2:08)

Gotcha. Okay, so traditional marine monitoring is kind of manual sampling and any wait for the lab results.

So how will real time monitoring change things?

Joachim de Jenlis (2:20)

It's a big difference. If you look at what you just mentioned, manual sampling, you have to go at the site, you have to take a sample, you have to bring it back, and you have to analyze it, okay? You can say it's a little bit like taking a picture of a moment. When you have real time monitoring, you are shooting a video, and you have more than one picture. You have all the information that comes to you almost in real time. I'll give you an example. For instance, we identified that during a month, we can take 2,900 measurements.

And between measurements, if you were to do manual samplings, you could have a lot of situations that develops, evolve, that you're not going to catch if you do a manual sampling. For instance, oil pollution, or the development of algae blooms, which we see a lot right now. This can happen within 2 weeks and disappear. With real time monitoring, you are able to catch these incidents.

Tim (3:21)

You can catch an emergency, can't you, in theory?

Joachim de Jenlis (3:23)

You can, and you can identify very rapidly if there is any source of pollution, and then you can take your actions to prevent this pollution to happen, or you can implement containment measures, for instance.

Tim (3:37)

Okay, so you're integrating Xylem's sensing technology with your kind of data boy platforms. Is that how it works? Right. So what does that combination allow you to do that was harder before?

Joachim de Jenlis (3:51)

Yeah. So when you are implementing data boy, you first need to understand what you're going to measure.

So there's multiple parameters that can be measured in the water or in the air.

Typically, with Xylem, we've got YSI exosomes, which are multi-parameter zones, and they can measure the turbidity of the water. They can measure the salinity, the temperature, the dissolved oxygens. I will not name all the lists, but it's a long list that you can measure. With the partnership with Ecocoast, we are able for every site to dimension the platform, which will host these sensors. Typically, if we are near shore, it's a really calm environment. You can have a small platform, but if you want to go offshore, where you have probably stronger environmental conditions, you would like to have a platform that is relatively bigger, which can sustain sea states a little bit more complex, and that's one of the benefits that we are going to bring. The second one, you know that we live in a country which is having very harsh environmental conditions. The temperature is very high. Therefore, you have high water temperatures, sometimes above 35 degrees for two weeks in a row. We measured that during the summer. That creates environmental conditions that are really, really difficult for sensors. Like there is a lot of marine growth. You would have seen that. And in order to have better data, you need to have the sensors cleaned. You need to do the calibration of the sensors. This partnership that we bring with Xylem allows us to have locally a service center with people that are able to provide this support, the calibration, the maintenance of the sensors regularly so that you can get better data.