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Real-time water quality monitoring at marina

Monitoring an urban waterway

The challenge

The marina sits within Dubai Creek – a densely developed urban waterway at the heart of one of the world’s most active maritime cities. As a high-end leisure and yachting destination, the marina faces a complex mix of environmental pressures. These include: warm summer temperatures, a semi-enclosed basin with limited water exchange, and the day-to-day activity of a working marina.

Managing water quality in this environment is not straightforward. Conditions change continuously and risks are varied – from thermal stress and low dissolved oxygen to vessel-related discharge. The consequences of missing an early warning can be significant for marine life, regulatory standing, and the marina’s reputation.

Spot sampling is not enough. Knowing what the water looks like on one day tells you nothing about what happened overnight, or what is building week on week.

The approach

Ecocoast deployed an EWQM-1500 monitoring buoy, fitted with a Xylem-YSI EXO3 multiparameter sonde at a fixed position within the marina. The sonde records 7 water quality parameters simultaneously, every 15 minutes, around the clock.

Data streams in real time to the YSI HydroSphere cloud platform, where it can be accessed remotely, viewed against alarm thresholds, and reviewed by the Ecocoast technical team.

This deployment is also the first live integration of the Ecocoast EWQM-1500 buoy with Xylem-YSI sensor technology in the GCC. A milestone in the Ecocoast × Xylem partnership that is now delivering regional monitoring capability backed by global instrumentation expertise.

Weekly and monthly reports are delivered to the client. Reports cover parameter performance against MOCCAE standards, trend analysis week-on-week, sonde-detectable risk occurrence, and recommendations for the next period.

What the project delivers

A live compliance baseline. Every reading is checked automatically against the MOCCAE (2020) Guiding Standards for Marine Water Properties, the UAE’s principal regulatory framework for marine water quality. This gives the marina a continuous, documented compliance record rather than a periodic snapshot.

Early warning, not just data. The system is configured with a three-tier alarm structure – Advisory, Alert and Critical – so that emerging conditions are flagged before they escalate. This turns raw data into a tool for proactive management.

Expert interpretation, not just numbers. This is where Ecocoast goes beyond the instrument. Ecocoast’s sustainability and environmental team – led by Dr. Philip Sanders, who holds a PhD in ecology and marine research experience from the University of Oxford – reviews the data and produces weekly and monthly reports for the marina team. Not many monitoring providers in the region offer this level of scientific analysis as a standard part of the service.

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