New Dutch satellite application investigates water basins for ‘water stress’
The Dutch company Terramira is developing – supported by the Netherlands Space Agency – a satellite application that monitors the availability and quality of water. BasinMeter informs users worldwide when ‘water stress’ occurs and what the consequences of climate change could be for the water supply.
Freshwater is scarce in South Africa’s Cape Town and the surrounding area. Some water reservoirs are only ten percent full, while citizens and businesses have a great need for water. What can governments and companies do to restore reservoirs? Plant a forest? Build a purification plant? Install irrigation systems?
To answer these questions, the Dutch company Terramira, after merging with the original developers 52impact, eLeaf and NEO, is building a satellite application that monitors water stress with the support of the Netherlands Space Agency.
Water stress occurs when there is a mismatch between water availability and usage. But it also occurs, for example, when water quality is too low or water availability comes under pressure as a result of climate change.
“From our office in the Netherlands, we can monitor water basins all over the world for water stress,” says Thijs Perenboom of Terramira. “With this, we provide governments, companies, and other stakeholders with information and tools to intervene where necessary.”
Satellite Data for Water Basins
The development of BasinMeter gained momentum when the Pacific Institute and the European Space Agency (ESA) issued a call to companies in 2024: how can satellite data contribute to information about water that is available to everyone? 52impact and eLeaf conducted a feasibility study and demonstrated that you can ‘see’ quite a lot with satellites. Together as Terramira they continue to build the BasinMeter.
‘Satellite data offer unique opportunities,’ explains Perenboom. ‘Satellites measure globally, even in places that are not easily accessible. And the measuring instruments are objective and independent, meaning there are no regional measurement differences and the data can be easily compared.’
With data from the Sentinel satellites of the European Copernicus Programme, water quality and volume, land use, deforestation, and vegetation quality, among other things, can be monitored.
Population growth can be predicted using United Nations economic models. And climate models provide insights into the likelihood of future drought. All this data together form the basis of BasinMeter. This application provides users with early insight into water risks and trends in a water basin area via a dashboard.
Public Data
In 2025, the application was demonstrated using data on three river basins: the Upper Mississippi (United States), Maipo (Chile), and Rio Grande and Rio Bravo (Mexico). Scaling up to 25 river basins will take place later this year. And next year, the dashboard will display one hundred river basins designated as vulnerable by the United Nations. The data will be integrated into the Pacific Institute’s Water Action Hub, making the insights largely publicly available.
Potential users of BasinMeter are not only governments looking to implement responsible water policies, explains Perenboom. They also include, for example, insurers and companies from the Water Resilience Coalition. This coalition consists of beverage and food producers, hotel chains, and energy companies that require large quantities of water for their production and business processes.
“Together with all stakeholders, you want to make agreements. How do you restore a water basin that is under pressure back to health?” says Perenboom. “Meaning that there is a balance between the supply and demand of water and that the available water is of sufficient quality.”
Innovation program gains traction
BasinMeter is being developed with support from the Netherlands Space Agency and funding from the ESA innovation program Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS). Perenboom: ‘This program helps us scale up from a prototype to a commercial application, something that is notoriously difficult. We have been working on the BasinMeter technology for five years, but thanks to the involvement of the Netherlands Space Agency, ESA, and the Pacific Institute as a launching customer, we see that our idea can now truly be realized.’
