Smart sensing for nutrients in our waterways: low-cost continuous monitoring for pollution tracking and real-time control

Overview

Nitrogen and phosphorus are central to the health of stormwater systems, rivers, wetlands, and lakes. They drive algal growth, oxygen stress, and downstream ecological impacts, and they are a key input to environmental reporting and catchment management. Yet most monitoring still relies on infrequent grab samples that miss the short pollution pulses that matter most.

The challenge is delivering nutrient monitoring that is affordable, low-maintenance, and reliable enough for continuous deployment across many sites. Existing nutrient sensors are often too expensive to deploy at the density needed to find pollution hotspots, demand more maintenance than industry can support, and struggle at the low concentrations that dominate everyday conditions.

This PhD will develop and validate a low-cost, low-power, field-ready nutrient sensing workflow designed for catchment-scale deployment, with a strong focus on supporting real-time control of partner-operated water assets.

Research activities

Working as part of the IoT for Water Hub (an ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub), you will:

• engage with industry partners to define real monitoring use cases
• compare and progress two to three candidate nutrient sensing approaches in the laboratory
• develop and assemble a field-ready sensor package with embedded confidence flags
• conduct multi-season field deployments at two contrasting partner sites
• demonstrate the sensor as part of a real-time control workflow at one partner asset
• translate the work into partner-ready standard operating procedures and deployment guidance.

You will be supported by a senior research fellow and a research assistant working alongside you on cross-water optimisation and field deployment.

Outcomes

By the end of the PhD you will have delivered a validated, low-cost nutrient monitoring workflow with field evidence from multiple sites, partner-ready standard operating procedures, and a demonstrated real-time control use case. You will graduate with strong research, fieldwork, electronics, and industry-engagement experience that translates directly into careers in water utilities, environmental consultancies, sensor companies, or further academic research.

Skills and experience

We are looking for a self-motivated student with a bachelor degree (honours) or master degree in:

• environmental engineering
• electrical engineering
• mechatronic engineering
• environmental science
• a closely related discipline.

Experience or interest in water quality, electronics, embedded systems, or data analysis is highly desirable.

The student should be comfortable with fieldwork in stormwater and waterway settings.

Scholarships

You may be eligible to apply for a research scholarship.

Explore our research scholarships

Keywords

• nutrients
• IoT
• sensors
• monitoring

Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information.