Testing, inspection, and certification firm SOCOTEC UK and Ireland has secured a contract with Yorkshire Water—in partnership with UnifAI Technology—to deploy AI-powered, continuous water quality monitoring across 20 inland bathing sites. The initiative, funded through Ofwat’s Water Breakthrough Challenge, is one of 16 innovation projects sharing over £42 million.1
Under the scheme, SOCOTEC will install and maintain advanced sensor arrays measuring temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, pH, ammonia, and turbidity. These sensors will feed real-time data into UnifAI’s AI engine, which has been trained using millions of historical data points to infer the likely presence of harmful bacteria like E. coli, without the need for direct microbial sampling. Initial models predict bacterial risk by correlating patterns in environmental readings with lab-tested bacterial levels.
One seemingly novel aspect of the project is its site-agnostic AI approach: instead of each location requiring bespoke models, UnifAI aims to develop generalized AI models that can work “out-of-the-box” across diverse water bodies, and so do not need to be trained on localised data. That scalability could significantly reduce rollout costs and time, widening the applicability of this kind of real-time monitoring system.2
SOCOTEC’s role includes installation, daily data validation, weekly interim reporting, and managing over 7,000 river spot samples for ongoing calibration. This combined effort promises to replace traditional lab testing with near real-time alerts, empowering public users to make informed decisions while supporting regulators and utilities with timely data.
OFWAT has awarded £1.9 million to the project, titled “Site-Agnostic AI Models for Water Quality and Safety” which brings together contributions from Yorkshire Water, The Rivers Trust, Surfers Against Sewage, British Standards Institute, UnifAI Technology, and United Utilities.3
Notes
[1] PRESS RELEASE: SOCOTEC UK and Ireland Secures Innovative AI-Driven Water Quality Monitoring Contract with Yorkshire Water, published on 4 August 2025.
[2] https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/satellites-robots-drones-and-ai-among-winners-of-ofwats-fifth-water-breakthrough-challenge/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[3] ibid
