Making up your mind if it is safe to enter the beach and soak your feet will soon be just a tap away.
City-based National Centre for Coastal Research (
NCCR) will soon launch a mobile app that will give beachgoers a forecast on the quality of water off the city beaches.
NCCR scientist Pravakar Mishra said the app, called ‘Clean Coast’, will give users an advisory and a forecast for the next five days on the quality of water off the Marina, Elliot’s, Thiruvanmiyur and Kovalam beaches. Basic water quality parameters like temperature,
salinity, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, phosphate and coliform levels will also be periodically updated.
Once the buoys begin transmitting real-time data on water quality, the app will be updated every day. Subsequently, another 100 beaches will also be linked to the application. “We already have tested the app providing predictions based on historical data. Once launched, users will get daily updates with forecast based on real-time data,” Mishra said.
The mobile app becomes handy particularly at a time when the city’s beaches are getting polluted due to discharge of sewage water. NCCR scientists have recorded a huge spike in pollution levels in beaches like Marina between March and September.
With given parameters, prediction for subsequent days will be calculated based on wave direction and currents. Besides data from the buoys, scientists will also use the results from collecting water and sediment samples along the coast.
“Every parameter in the app will have an index value to let people know if the levels are low or high. If you go by central pollution control board’s permissible limits on water quality, our beaches always exceed that limit. So, the challenge is to come up with a limit that is acceptable to all,” Mishra said.
