Multiscale observation networks for optical monitoring of coastal waters, lakes and estuaries
MONOCLE innovates and develops sensor, platform, and data handling technologies to increase coverage and lower the cost of in situ sensors in inland and coastal water bodies. These ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to direct anthropogenic impacts but of high economic importance and crucial to sustainable food, energy, and clean water supply. At the same time, these water bodies represent areas of the weakest performance in present EO capability to date. 

The MONOCLE system will reduce uncertainties in Earth Observation (EO) by characterising atmospheric and water optical properties. MONOCLE will deploy new and improved sensors on autonomous platforms (buoys, ships, drones), and further fill information gaps by developing low-cost complementary solutions for citizen scientists. This will provide essential reference observations needed to further improve and grow EO-based water quality services. 

MONOCLE will be requirement-driven and implemented by sensor and platform developers, sensor-data infrastructure experts, and EO scientists. A service-oriented data storage, processing, and visualisation infrastructure based on open data standards will integrate MONOCLE seamlessly with existing platforms. This also allows MONOCLE to build sensor performance traceability into its core to support synergistic sensor use and data inspection to identify sensor drift and episodic events.

MONOCLE will demonstrate the added value of EO and water quality oriented sensor network to Copernicus EO services, GEOSS data brokering and GEO capacity building initiatives through a number of validation campaigns and use cases, including data-poor regions where no similar infrastructure yet exists. It is expected that the evolution of system standards, new sensors and innovative use of observation platforms of MONOCLE will foster innovation and commercial opportunities for the EO commercial sector and its downstream users in domains ranging from public health to energy and food security.