The Catalan startup Neurite has created software based on artificial intelligence that predicts the behavior of water in hydrological basins and allows real-time knowledge of what the flow of a river will be in the coming hours.
Thanks to this tool, it will be possible to know in advance the risk of floods in rivers, lakes, and hydrological basins, among other bodies of water. According to company data, in Catalonia there are 383 spaces with these characteristics. In Spain, 4,000. The software is aimed at public entities responsible for water management.
To predict water behavior, Neurite has developed software that combines data captured by sensors installed in rivers, rain gauges, and meteorological radars (among other instruments), with artificial intelligence algorithms. This system allows predicting the risk of flooding related to physical factors.
For factors related to human activity, these same artificial intelligence algorithms will analyze human actions (such as water extractions for irrigation, human consumption, or electricity production) through machine learning techniques, known in the sector as deep learning.
Overall, the data will be automatically updated in real time as new information arrives and will be stored in the cloud. In this way, the software created by Neurite will be aware of any change in water movement the moment it happens and will be able to offer predictions that will take into account both physical and human phenomena that intervene in the modification of flows.
For the company's CEO, Francesc Batlle, their software offers "above all immediacy and precision", since "until now, these forecasts were made through other analysis methods, which made the process slow and quickly obsolete."
Neurite has already developed a pilot test of its system in the headwaters of the Ter river during 2021 with the Agència Catalana de l'Aigua (ACA). Batlle has described it as a "success" to the point that it has "encouraged" the company to target other types of clients, such as supply companies, hydroelectric plants, or irrigation communities.
The startup Neurite, founded in 2018 and based in Barcelona, has a team of five people. It recently received 75,000 euros from ACCIÓ's Startup Capital aid, which the agency for business competitiveness of the Department of Business and Labor grants to emerging companies in their earliest stage.
In the future, they are considering the possibility of expanding their range of clients. They would like to introduce their software in other areas, such as the application of artificial intelligence for data prediction in the business environment.