The Real-time Predictions of Agricultural Chemical Runoff: Multi-scale visualisations of water quality risks and costs project was funded jointly by NERC and BBSRC and various industry partners as a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Innovation Club (SARIC) research project from 2017-01-01 to 2018-08-01.
The project developed a prototype Web based decision support tool geared to support farmers and water resource organisations with regard agri-chemical applications for controlling pests. The tool provided information to farmers about when, where and under what conditions the water pollution risks of applying specific agricultural chemicals (pesticides and herbicides) are low and when these risks are high. The prototype regularly pulled Met Office data of observed and forecast weather, preprocessed this and pushed it through field scale and catchment models to predict: runoff and the efficacy of pesticide application at the field scale; and, pollution levels at the catchment scale and in particular around specific sites used for abstracting water.