Cuenka, environmental solutions

Cuenka aims to detect parameters to assess water quality in order to locate critical points of contamination and from there create intervention strategies.

The Aburrá-Medellín River crosses the entire metropolitan area and is not a source of supply for the 10 municipalities it flows through, given that, throughout the history of the city, the river has been used to dump or receive sewage, which is why today it is polluted with tons of organic matter and toxic waste such as cyanides, phenols, sulfides, mercury and lead.Additionally, the river has suffered other simultaneous problems due to deforestation, mining and solid waste disposal.Consequently, metropolitan citizens are supplied with drinking water from external sources, such as the La Fe and Rio Grande II reservoirs located in municipalities outside the metropolitan area, while citizens located in rural areas are supplied from micro-watersheds that are part of the Aburrá-Medellín River.These sources are of great importance but have been affected by impacts associated with the following causes: alteration of the water regime with the modification of watercourses, drying of wetlands, extraction of materials from the river, alteration of recharge zones and springs due to the expansion of the agricultural and livestock frontier, intensive use of agrochemicals, inadequate disposal of solid waste and domestic and industrial wastewater at the rural and urban levels.

Therefore, the limnetic environments as an ecosystem and source of drinking water supply for the metropolitan area and surrounding municipalities are suffering high pressure due to the spatial and temporal alteration of the hydrological, chemical and biological variables that determine the sustainability of the water resource, which ultimately affects its quality and quantity, which synergistically involves economic, social and cultural aspects of the metropolitan area and surrounding municipalities at risk.

The problem will be solved by means of three activities: monitoring to conserve, locating critical points to manage and environmental culture.

Monitoring to conserve

Through a drone flight plan, the aim is to detect the contamination sources over the entire water network of the Aburrá basin and the sources that supply drinking water, flights are made over a large part of the water extension and accessing all areas. Thus, guaranteeing correct coverage.

The flight plan includes mapping of the electromagnetic spectrum of the water body, since from sensors such as the Altum Pt Micasense, it is possible to analyze the visible, near infrared,thermal sensor and panchromatic spectrum.In this way, from the interaction of the electromagnetic waves recorded in the water body, it is possible to indicate the quality of the water that may be present at the moment of the flight. This allows us to identify the source of the contamination and to map the areas of interest by reading the electromagnetic spectrum. The parameters that assess water quality and can be spectrally evaluated are temperature, organic matter, total solids and chlorophyll-a. 

Locating critical points to manage

Flights are made over the Aburrá-Medellín river and its main tributaries, especially those sources that supply water to aqueducts. Critical points (activities or factors that may alter water quality) are identified and geo-referenced based on what is observed on the screen.

Environmental culture

We adapt the audiovisual material obtained in the monitoring flights for conservation with future panoramas in virtual reality formats, which allows moving children to any place or situation of importance through a device such as virtual reality glasses. This experience captures the children's interest in the care and proper management of themetropolitan area's water resources.

The solution aims to directly and indirectly impact the citizens of the metropolitan area of the Aburrá Valley, which according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) are approximately 4,119,008 people.

The implementation of the solution is intended to reduce the risk of the citizens of the metropolitan area acquiring serious health problems related to illnesses that are transmitted by water, such as amebiasis, giardiasis, shigellosis, cryptosporidiosis, Hepatitis A, among others.The solution aims at detecting pollution sources so that the competent authorities and those sectors that treat drinking water can consider the results acquired by Cuenka in the adequate management of the water resource.In many cases, the water treatments of certain aqueducts do not consider certain sources of contamination upstream and therefore the treatments implemented are usually not sufficient to eliminate pathogens or substances that put the health of the people who drink the water at risk.In addition, early detection and correction of certain sources of contamination lowers the cost of drinking water treatment for water treatment agents and, as a result, access to drinking water does not increase costs. 

On the other hand, detecting the accumulation of solid waste in the water network makes it possible to extract it and avoid possible damming, which is of great importance so that when there are high rainfall events, flooding does not occur in the areas surrounding the main river and its tributaries, thus reducing the risk of flooding or flash floods for the people living or working in the proximity of this resource.

Finally, the solution allows the decontamination of the Medellín River to approach a reality where the problems of odors and visual pollution are considerably reduced, improving the quality of life of all the inhabitants of the metropolitan area.

The cuenka team is professional environmental engineering graduates so we have knowledge of the dynamics of the water resource of the city, we are also certified to pilot drones and we are passionate about the use of technology to solve this type of problem.

Throughout our professional career we have developed a thesis on the study of riparian zones of the aburra-Medellín river where we used geographic information systems and remote sensing analysis to understand the hydrological, morphological and ecosystemic dynamics of the river. Additionally, we conducted inspection and monitoring of the micro-watersheds that supply water to rural aqueducts in the south of the metropolitan area that then flow into the Medellin river, where we made risk maps that may affect the water quality of this resource through geographic information systems and study of satellite images. In this way, the experience we have acquired allows us to understand in depth the current problems and improve our knowledge about new methodologies such as GIS and remote sensing.

We are perseverant, active, responsible and dedicated to each of the activities or work we develop so we are trained both in knowledge and in skills and qualities to develop our solution.

Cuenka is a company that offers different services and one of its focuses is research, through our solution we want to solve a specific environmental problem of our community, we made a prototype by means of a storyboard and through surveys, both to the community in general and to professionals related to the subject and we realized that people are interested in working on strategies to improve the quality of the river of the city since:

• The Aburrá Valley basin presents a varied biological diversity, reflected in plants and animals like amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, some endemic to the country.

• Despite the permanent pressure that exists on the Aburrá River Basin due to the dynamics of urban development and economic activities, 34,616.70 hectares of land occupied with natural cover still remain within it, equivalent to 28.67% of its total área.

• The 16.61% of the territory of the basin, that is, more than 20,000 hectares correspond to protected areas declared at national and regional level.

• The watershed is characterized by its economic importance compared to the department and the national level, in the basin 60% of the population of the department is concentrated, in it is located 69% of the productive units of the department of Antioquia, which in turn generates 67% of GDP.

The dynamics of the city is directly related to the bore river and its tributaries and the greatest limitation of the water resource is the quality of the water that only allows the use and exploitation of this for industrial activities and reception of discharges, inhibiting the possibility of other uses such as agricultural, landscape or recreational.
So, through research, data mentioned above and our experience being part of the community we understand the importance of the need to decontaminate the Aburrá River.

The use of drones is very useful for the inspection of the territory reducing costs, time, labor and risks. In Colombia, traditional methods are still used for different activities, so the use of drones to collect information is something innovative in the country.

In addition, it is intended not only inspection of the water resource but also to detect parameters to evaluate the quality of the water through remote sensing techniques and thus estimate a pollution indicator, in this way there would be a greater representativeness of the data compared to traditional methods of sampling in situ, greater coverage in the area to be worked and data would be taken more frequently

The main technology for executing the solution to the challenge is unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones. Drones with high flight autonomy and spatial resolution are required. Such as the Phantom 4 RTK, Mavic 3 enterprise or Phantom 4 Multispectral drones. It also requires sensors adaptable to the drones mentioned above, such as the Micasense ALTUM-PT multispectral camera, which combines multispectral, thermographic and high-definition RGB camera, in addition to 6 spectral bands.

In the year 2023, a market launch with all Cuenka's services is planned for the month of March. However, for the service that includes the solution to the actual problem, it is intended to launch a pilot in the south of the metropolitan area that includes the inspection of 11 micro-basins of the Aburrá-Medellín River that supply rural aqueducts, with a total of 22770 users, In addition, this year we expect to carry out inspections in the La Iguaná and La Garcia streams, which are tributaries of the Aburrá-Medellín River with high pollutant levels, where we expect to benefit neighboring communities such as the neighborhoods of La Iguaná, El Jardín, Nueva Villa, La Guyana, Chino, Playa Rica and El Tapón, with more than 1000 inhabitants.

One of the limitations to develop the solution would be that government entities are not interested in us developing the strategy, however Cuenka as part of corporate social responsibility is interested in carrying out actions that are related to the care and preservation of the environment, so if the state is not interested in acquiring our services in favor of the community,  We would be willing to carry out our project with company resources as part of its social and environmental commitment, in this way it would be benefiting the community in general and in addition to that contributes to the professional growth of our company.

Another of the barriers that we could have are financial resources since Cuenka is not yet operating, however, the market launch of our different services is intended for March 2023.

Cuenka at this time has no alliance with any organization. However, in 2022 we were in a program called “ruta del emprendimiento” which is a program of the mayor of our city, where we received training classes to develop the solution and the idea of entrepreneurship so we were able to strengthen our knowledge to consolidate a successful business idea with a social impact.  In addition to receiving guidance to develop ideas focused on technology.

As a goal, Cuenka wants to generate alliances with different strategic actors such as universities to participate in research projects in favor of the community and also generate alliances with government entities to participate in municipal projects.

Cuenka is a project with a strong focus on technology and innovation, through the implementation and operation of drone technology, geographic information systems, and remote sensing analysis. Thus generating precise and timely technological solutions, so that the company has a service business model.

This year Cuenka intends to launch into the market with all its services, since using drones we offer services to different sectors of the market, so it is important to clarify that financial sustainability does not depend only on the solution to the problem we are raising. On our website you can see the other services that we offer.