How Do Wastewater, Origami, Covid-19 and Remote Sensing Fit Together?
When you hear the words “remote sensing”, what do you think about? Drones taking pictures of streets? Spy satellites? The chances are that if you’re in the clean technology field, you’re thinking about land use and land cover, mapping crop productivity, estimating water accessibility, monitoring air pollution - all very typical cases where data from satellites, drones, UAVs and cameras are used to observe environmental conditions and make predictions. But, what about wastewater? Now wastewater is typically the poor cousin of the water sector - we all need it, but we’d much rather not think about it at all! But it’s really important and as we’ve seen recently, can be used for more than just waste disposal. Right now, cities and countries around the world are monitoring wastewater to detect the spread of Covid-19. So far, sampling methods have focused on collecting traditional grab samples at the wastewater treatment plant or at other inlets in the sewer system. However, th