< >
Algal blooms are a serious and growing threat to our environment and economy, causing an estimated $17 billion in damage globally each year. Climate change exacerbates this problem, with harmful algal blooms increasing by 18% annually. These blooms result in fish kills and harm to the aquaculture and recreational industries and have detrimental impacts on human and animal health. Without adequate monitoring and control methods, climate change will cause the damage of algal blooms to increase, highlighting the urgent need for a system addressing algal blooms. Aquality directly addresses these problems. Aquality is an integrated aquatic robot and web application that monitors, predicts, and creates a treatment plan for algal blooms, using a recommendation algorithm for aquatic managers to combat these algal bloom attacks. Aquality contains an extensive database with around 30 different algae treatments that specialize in reducing algal properties using data from peer-reviewed scientific literature. Aquality creates a treatment plan tailored to removing algae in a specific water body, which includes the treatment dose and frequency. Aquality creates an end-to-end solution by understanding the significant problems in managing aquatic systems.