The use of internet of things (IoT) technology, combined with a software as a service (SaaS) platform, will help water companies stay on the right side of government rules on the quality of water in Englands rivers.Rules coming into force this year mean it will no longer be the easy option for water companies to simply pay fines rather than fix the problem, with the cap on fine limits removed and the threat of prison for water company directors who break the rules introduced.Not-for-profit Additive Catchments has teamed up with Capgemini in a 10-year agreement that will see the IT services giant build a river quality monitoring service with the scale needed to support water companies in England and beyond.Additive Catchments catchment monitoring as a service (CMaaS) uses sensors in rivers, which feed data and artificial intelligence-driven insights to a cloud-based software platform used by water companies, environment regulators and even the public.The CMaaS project also includes the University of Plymouth, digital infrastructure from Siemens and monitoring consultancy from AtkinsRalis, as well as an ecosystem of installation and maintenance companies in the UK.This type of technology is a necessity for water companies and those monitoring their activity after section 82 of the 2021 Environment Act comes into effect this year. It requires all water companies in the UK to implement continuous monitoring upstream and downstream of discharge points, and has created a massive environmental monitoring programme.Rob Passmore, CEO and co-founder at Additive Catchments, said the three-year-old organisation has a mission to improve river health in the UK and eventually internationally. He said Section 82 means water companies can be fined heavily, and senior directors could even face prison sentences for serious failures. Its significant and the legislation has teeth, Passmore told Computer Weekly. It will no longer be easier just to pay the fines, and as a result, all water companies are mobilising projects around this.Read more about IT and environmental monitoringResearchers will use data gathered frommonitoring rivers, weather conditions and ground water saturationto improve flood and drought defences.Singapores national water agency PUB is deploying autonomous drones at six reservoirs to monitor water quality.Digital twins of machines, facilities and infrastructureswill create virtual representations that, in time, will connect to allow for planning and monitoring urban environments.Under the rules, water companies must have 25% of their storm overflow discharge points monitored by 2030 and 100% by 2035.The regulators and public will be able to keep an eye on river water quality through the platform.Fundamentally, we dont really understand whats happening in our rivers because we havent got the data points necessary to really understand where there are problems, where were doing things well, where were doing things terribly and how to design interventions in a way that is effective and cost effective, said Passmore.The partnership with Capgemini gives the organisation the delivery capability required to scale the platform nationally and internationally.This is the largest environmental monitoring project in the world. Its huge, said Passmore. We give information to all river catchment stakeholders, including the government, agriculture, water companies, etc.The CMaaS uses IoT connectivity to send readings from rivers every 15 minutes. According to Passmore, from an IT and operations technology (OT) perspective, its enormous.He said the legislation has only just come into effect, and water companies now need to put sensors and monitoring capabilities in place or face heavy fines.We are actively engaging with all of the English water companies, who are actively procuring to address this, said Passmore.There is a commercial pilot of CMaaS already underway with Anglian Water.The work will see Capgemini support the building of the platform, running the service at a national and international scale, as well as research and development looking at new opportunities like Earth observation and machine learning capabilities that can be integrated into the service in the future.Paul Haggerty, head of UK energy and utilities at Capgemini, said there is demand for the service from outside the UK. We are a global organisation and conversations are in place beyond the UK, in countries such as France, Belgium, Australia and Dubai, he said.Theres climate change, which is putting all sorts of pressure on water, and theres significant population growth going on, and in our view, business as usual is not going to cut it, Haggerty told Computer Weekly. You cant expect a different outcome if youre faced with those challenges and those numbers by doing the same thing again.