The Problem 

Approximately 80% of the ocean remains uncharted. The absence of real-time underwater data creates a significant knowledge gap, potentially leading to unforeseen negative impacts. While satellite technologies offer information on shallow depths, they require calibration using real-time oceanic data. Currently, there’s no real-time monitoring and control of activities occurring beneath the seas.

The Solution 

Key solutions are vital across various sectors, from environmental and water quality monitoring to noise, camera, asset, and structural control. Integral to these solutions is the design, deployment, and management of an Underwater Wireless Network Infrastructure.. To enhance real-time data accessibility, a Cloud Monitoring Platform and Dashboard have been developed for immediate data collection and visualization. To round off these solutions, there’s a focused effort on seamlessly integrating third-party sensors, drones, devices, and systems, ensuring comprehensive monitoring and control capabilities.

W Sense’s Impact

“W-Sense technology has one overridingly positive impact characteristic, which is that it is able to open a window onto Life under Water (SDG14) in its broadest sense.  Many subsea activities that are easily hidden from view are inherently harmful to the environment because they are not easily visible and monitored.  The W-Sense technology changes that and, by bringing visibility to sub-sea activities, we can introduce measurability, accountability and ensure that regulations that protect the underwater environment can be applied.  This has the potential to ‘raise the bar’ in a very substantial way in relation to the quality of behavior and actions of all actors that takes place in the underwater environment.”

-Chiara Petrioli, Founder and CEO  

Why we invested

With real-time monitoring and measurement of things such as marine protected areas and natural capital assets, and the ability for their system to integrate with a variety of other sensor technologies, W Sense could become an enabling platform for developing true Blue Carbon markets around natural capital, unlocking the value of these assets for governments and municipalities and thus, spurring conservation efforts. From an ocean carbon dioxide removal, coastal erosion, and biodiversity perspective, this could have wide-ranging positive sustainability implications.

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