Artificial Intelligence And Earth Observation To Explore Water Quality In The Wadden Sea

Earth-observation systems (satellites and in situ monitoring) are routinely used to collect information about water quality. Recently, smartphone-based tools and other citizen-science sensors have enabled citizens to also contribute to the collection of scientifically relevant data. This chapter describes a decision support system used to predict optical water-quality indicators in the Wadden Sea, which is an intertidal marine system, where natural processes related to sediment transport and primary production define the basis of its ecological values. As information sources, the system uses satellite data, data collected with a mobile app and physical data for the period 2003-2015. An artificial-intelligence technique, inductive learning, is used to analyze the data and provide predictions in terms of water colour represented via the Forel-Ule scale (a comparative scale for colour).