Blue Heart: The UK’s Most Digitally Connected Water Catchment.

The Blue Heart project aims to enhance the resilience of the East Sussex region in the UK against the increasing threats of flooding and water scarcity, both of which are exacerbated by the effects of climate change. This collaborative project, spearheaded by East Sussex County Council and Kisters, focuses on the Eastbourne and south Wealden area, a region vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather events.

To achieve its goals, the Blue Heart project has employed a multi-faceted approach that combines cutting-edge technology with community engagement. By deploying advanced monitoring systems, the project collects valuable data on water levels, rainfall accumulations, and other relevant hydrological factors across the region. This data will then be analysed to identify potential flood risks and inform evidence-based decision-making as well as providing the tools for the distribution of real-time information to local residents to support community action.

To help with the analysis of the data in this project the Blue Heart team and KISTERS created a centralised environmental data hub (Datasphere – Figure 1) for the sharing of precipitation, water level and other hydrological data sets between different stakeholders such as East Sussex County Council, the Environment Agency, and Southern Water. Kisters also enabled East Sussex to develop its own sensor network to fill the gaps in understanding as well as being able to see sensor data and weather data in real time.

The Blue Heart project represents a significant step towards a more sustainable and water-secure East Sussex. By addressing the challenges posed by climate change and urban development, this initiative aims to protect the region’s natural environment, safeguard its communities, and ensure a prosperous future for generations to come.

Climate change is accelerating extreme rainfall. In Eastbourne and South Wealden, outdated infrastructure and data gaps were increasing flood risk. Agencies needed a faster, smarter way to understand and respond to these threats.

At the heart of Blue Heart is KISTERS datasphere – a centralised environmental data hub that connects all project partners in real time.

KISTERS set up an end-to-end solution for the Blue Heart team to help them have further advance warning of the storms, monitor the risk of surface water flooding, including a system to provide alarms at key points, a complete suite of monitoring tools to assess the risk as well as the analysis of any flooding events. KISTERS also helped build up the sensor network to monitor areas of significant interest to the water balance across the Eastbourne and south Wealden.

The requirements for the telemetry side of the Blue Heart project:

• Create a Datasphere platform to view forecast storms and rainfall alongside local information on catchments to understand key hot spots that may be affected.
• Deploy a sensor network to monitor several high-priority sites affected by flooding
• Display the rainfall and water level data collected at those sites in a near real-time display.
• Create a platform to enable data exchange with other data platforms, data providers, and end-users.
• Create a vendor-agnostic platform, i.e., one that is not tied to one set of data loggers.
• Create a platform where data can be shown to residents to speed up reaction times to surface water flooding.
• Create alarms on incoming live data that trigger email, text and Twitter alerts.

Through Datasphere, we were able to:

• Centralise rainfall, river, and groundwater data from the Environment Agency, councils, and Southern Water
• Stream live data from 495+ sensors into a single platform
• Share instant alerts via email, SMS, and social media
• Publish live flood information directly to residents
• Provide a vendor-agnostic, future-ready network for expansion

• First UK catchment with live cross-agency flood data
• 24/7 monitoring and proactive decision-making
• Faster response, reduced damage, better-prepared communities
• A replicable model for catchment management across the UK