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Tech Barcelona welcomes hyds as one of the five finalist startups of The Global Water Challenge, a global initiative promoted by GoHub –Global Omnium’s open innovation and corporate venturing hub– together with IBM and the support of ACCIÓ and Tech Barcelona, to capture the best technological solutions to anticipate and solve water problems, our most scarce and vital resource.

🃏 Póker de startups #deeptech finalistas de nuestro #TGWCBarcelona #TGWC @TechBarcelona @accio_cat @IBM_EShttps://t.co/OrQkBtNAdl https://t.co/ItjZxQIK65

— GoHub (@GoHubTech) February 11, 2022

hyds, together with AQUATEC proyectos para el sector del agua SAU, will implement the Argos system in Ireland after winning the tender launched by Met Éireann.

The project contemplates 1 year for the implementation of the system, the connection with all the data sources, the adaptation and integration of the different algorithms, the development of some specific functionalities and the deployment under a high-availability redundant service. After that, service will be offered for 7 years.

In this initial meeting, a review was made of the objectives of the project, the detailed planning of each phase and the different actors. The next steps were also discussed, with real-time data acquisition being the first to work on.

hyds has been invited to present at the IFMS (International Forum of Meteorological Societies, https://ifms.org/) 2021 Global meeting the experience implementing MH-EWS (Multi Hazard Early Warning Systems). In particular the experience of implementing the outputs of the H2020 Anywhere project (MH-EWS and A4EU systems, seed of the Argos System) at different levels.

The Title and abstract of the presentation was the following:
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ANYWHERE MULTI-HAZARD IMPACT-BASED EARLY WARNING SYSTEM AT MUNICIPAL, REGIONAL AND NATIONAL LEVEL

ANYWHERE H2020 innovation action (www.anywhere-h2020.eu) created an operational Multi Hazard Early Warning System (MH-EWS) focused on translating the meteorological forecasts into Impact forecasting products, and a set of tools (A4EU platform) tailored for different stakeholders to foster pro-active management of hydrometeorological emergencies.

Those ANYWHERE solutions have been implemented as operational services for Civil Protection Authorities and Emergency Management Centres at different levels: municipal, regional and national level.

The presentation will introduce the case study of Spain, showing the multilevel implementation:

• Municipal: Implementation in 34 municipalities of Alicante region (~600k inhabitants in total) for flood early warning and emergency management. Where Early Warning based on a multi-source of impact products has been linked with municipal auto-protection plans to help municipal civil protection authorities to trigger impact mitigation actions and improve emergency management.
• Regional: Implementation in Catalunya area (~8M inhabitants) for multi-risk management: flash- floods and riverine floods, snow, forest fires, heat and cold waves, wind, air pollution, etc. The implementation is focused on providing early warning on different elements (both administrative units and critical elements) to help focus the civil protection authorities in the most potential affected areas to disseminate local warnings and distribute assets accordingly.
• National: The ANYWHERE solution is the backbone of the Spanish national alert network (RAN: Red de Alerta Nacional). This implementation connects and collects data and warnings in real time from the different national agencies (National Weather Agency, National Geological Institute, National Water Directorate, National Transit Authority, National Ports Authority, etc.) in order to provide a single access point to all national warnings and associated information for civil protection authorities.

Explanation of the systems as well as a real-time demonstration is done

After the process of setting up the Argos City system for 34 municipalities in Alicante, mainly in the Vega Baja of the Segura river, hyds has presented together with Aquatec and Hidraqua the functionalities of the developed system.

The basic objective of the Argos City service implemented is to provide the municipalities of the Vega Baja with an early warning system for floods. For this, it includes various types of information and alerts:

• Official Adverse meteorological phenomena (FMA) notices from the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET).
• Rain gauge sensors from different organisms.
• Weather forecast models from the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
• Short-term rain forecasting products (nowcasting) and impact due to punctual rain (exceeding drainage capacity) and aggregate rain (growth of torrents and streams), based on radar information (using radar data from AEMET) using algorithms from the Center for Applied Research in Hydrometeorology of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (CRAHI-UPC).

Likewise, the system makes it possible to connect alerts with the self-protection plans of the various municipalities, helping to anticipate risk situations and monitor associated actions.

The system is completed with dissemination tools (SMS, email) and the ability to be used from any device (desktop, tables, mobile), which facilitates the management of risk situations by the civil protection teams of the municipalities.

hyds has presented the Argos platform as one of the 5 finalists of the Global Water Challenge in Barcelona. The Global Water Challenge is an initiative of go:hub, together with IBM, Acció and Tech Barcelona to seek Startups with disruptive technology solutions that can help make decisions that anticipate major problems in the water environment (Improvement of agriculture and food production, smart water, Efficient infrastructures, Combat drought and diminishing water reserves, ocean care, preventing natural disasters and desertification, etc.). Finalist companies receive benefits such as access to a network of experts and mentors, working with the best partners that combine business and innovation leadership, support to give visibility and drive the commercialisation of proposals. The winning proposal receives up to € 3M investment.

The event was organised within Tech Spirit Barcelona, ​​a benchmark event for the local innovative community with a global outlook and ambition.