LG Sonic Press Release
It’s been said that data is the new gold. And for over a decade, through 10,000 projects in 59 countries, Dutch ultrasonic algae mitigation company LG Sonic has gathered billions of data points from its real-time water monitors called MPC Buoys (Monitor, Predict, Control). This wealth of proprietary data, when combined with live satellite imagery, machine learning and AI processing, means that LG Sonic can now do what no other company or even governmental organization can: predict harmful algal blooms (HAB) up to six days before they happen.
In terms of data gold, LG Sonic is as rich as Croesus. Or, using more 21st Century terms – it’s now effectively the “Google of Water.”
With harmful algal blooms accelerated by climate change threatening the drinking water supplies for millions of people, LG Sonic has launched a non-profit organization called FutureProof Lakes which will provide freshwater monitoring, prediction, diagnosis and treatment advice for free to developing nations. The project is slated to begin with 677 lakes in Africa.
LG Sonic co-founder and CEO, 38-year old Yousef Yousef, member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders Class of 2022, unveiled the project recently in a WEF article.
“Compared to land-based pollution, what happens beneath a lake's surface only becomes apparent after the ecosystem's balance has changed, and it is almost irreversible,” explained Yousef Yousef, co-founder and CEO of LG Sonic and FutureProof Lakes. “Eutrophication, a process where nitrogen and phosphorus build up in a water body, is one of the main pollution issues which trigger HAB’s. The impact on public health directly from toxic algal blooms is severe, with over 100,000 lakes experiencing harmful algal blooms every year which leaves millions of people without access to water.
FutureProof Lake’s strategy is three-pronged:
1. FutureProof Lakes will create awareness about harmful algal blooms on multiple levels: local, national and international - encompassing laymen, professionals and governmental officials - to establish foundational support for its mission to save lakes and maintain access to clean and safe water.
2. FutureProof Lakes will develop a platform visualizing all lakes, providing the diagnostic data and real-time stats on their water quality. Utilizing ten years of LG Sonic’s remote sensing data, a timeline of lake development over the years can be modeled, with process-based models developed for larger lakes. Information on water quality variables will be derived from remote sensing data and calibrated/validated with in-situ measurements. The near-real-time capabilities of remote sensing will be combined with the predictive skills of the process model in an early warning system of HAB.
3. The information developed by FutureProof Lakes will be shared for free. Based on diagnostic reports combined with treatment advice, local water institutions and/or government will gain easier access to funds for preventive measures or solutions to harmful algal blooms. FutureProof Lakes will play an active role in recovering lakes together with the local stakeholders.
The World Economic Forum produced a video to explain the radically innovative technique LG Sonic uses to kill algae without chemicals and without any collateral damage to the environment or release of toxins, unlike every other method of algae control.
The United States GAO recently pressured NOAA and the EPA for an action plan on fighting harmful algal blooms in the U.S. HAB’s are the source of potent neurotoxins, dispersed both in the water and in the air. These "cyanotoxins" can cause rapid death and permanent injury as well as long-term neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS / Lou Gehrig's disease). A toddler can sustain permanent liver damage from just five accidental swallows of water. Even if the algal blooms don't reach the stage of cyanotoxin release, they still create a condition called "hypoxia" in which the imbalance of excess algae deplete the water's oxygen, triggering mass aquatic animal deaths.
For more information on FutureProof Lakes, visit https://futureprooflakes.org.
