Innovator Generation Water Tech Challenge

Clean Nature

Team/Organization:
Clean Nature: Patricia Gomez, Claudie Ratté-Fortin, Anne Carabin
From Quebec City, QC

Tackling the issue of road salt with artificial intelligence

Clean Nature is interested in environmental protection and aims to contribute to the technological development applied to the management and conservation of natural resources.

As we face extreme winter conditions, public safety must be ensured through maintenance operations, where de-icing agents are largely achieved using salts. But the excessive application of roads salts has led to major environmental problems. Salt accumulation in water bodies affects both aquatic ecosystems and the surrounding fauna and flora where salinity can even reach lethal levels for some species.

Clean Nature focuses on reducing excessive road salt use while maintaining public safety through guiA, an adapted artificial intelligence model (AIM) based on local real-time meteorological, environmental and road conditions. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and its self-learning capability, guiA provides the optimal type and dose of de-icing to apply by considering specific local and real time conditions.

Photo credit Alexander Ortiz