No measured accuracy percentage is quoted below. The differentiator is that every estimate ships with a calibrated, validated uncertainty band — and that the method's blind spots are stated, not hidden.
A · ACCURACY & VALIDATION
How do I trust a number from space in a dam-safety file?
You trust it because it arrives with its limits attached. Each estimate is delivered as a conformal prediction interval with guaranteed coverage — a turbid plume, a partial cloud or a low sun angle widens the band rather than producing a confident wrong answer. The surface signal is benchmarked against in-situ measurements: where you hold sediment cores, turbidity probes or a recent bathymetric survey, those become the reference the satellite layer is checked against.
- Anchored to your survey. A bathymetric survey is the ground truth that calibrates the inter-survey signal — we extend it, we do not overrule it.
- Honest flagging. Scenes too clouded or turbid to resolve are flagged, not silently filled.
- Validation pack. The comparison protocol and residuals ship with the product and stay current.
B · RESOLUTION & UPDATE FREQUENCY
How fine, how often?
Spatial: per-pixel surface mapping across the reservoir footprint, resolving plumes, near-shore deposition zones and the inflow delta separately from open water.
Temporal: refreshed on the satellite revisit cycle — optical passes depend on clear sky, while radar water-extent continues through cloud.
C · INTEGRATION & SCADA
Does it reach my control room?
- API — time series and per-zone values for programmatic pull.
- GeoTIFF — georeferenced layers for GIS and asset records.
- PDF report — survey-style brief for the dam-safety file.
The API exposes standard tag-style values and intervals that a SCADA / historian integration can ingest as derived points alongside existing instrumentation.
D · TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS — HANDLED HONESTLY
Optical light cannot see through deep or very turbid water
This is the central honest limit. Optical sensing reads the surface and near-surface — it cannot directly measure deposition on the bed of a deep reservoir, and very turbid water saturates the signal. We do not pretend a satellite replaces a survey boat. We mitigate three ways: (1) we infer bed accumulation from the surface sediment budget — what the catchment delivers and what settles — calibrated against your bathymetry; (2) we fuse radar-derived water extent and level so storage change is tracked even when optical is unusable; (3) every inferred value carries a wider interval the further it sits from direct observation, so the uncertainty is visible rather than buried.
Cloud cover interrupts optical passes; we state gaps explicitly and lean on radar to maintain extent continuity through them.
E · COMPLIANCE & STANDARDS
Where it fits dam-safety practice
Outputs are designed to support, not replace, periodic bathymetric survey obligations and dam-safety monitoring regimes, giving an auditable inter-survey record. Processing runs under EU data residency.
We do not claim a dam-safety certification or regulatory seal we do not hold, and we say so. The product feeds the file your engineers and regulators already maintain.
F · DELIVERY FORMATS
What you actually receive
- API time series with value + interval per zone
- GeoTIFF raster layers (sediment / turbidity / extent)
- Vector tables (CSV / GeoPackage)
- PDF survey-style reports
- SCADA / historian-ingestible feed
G · HORIZON
The window it covers
HydroSed is primarily a monitoring and trend product: it closes the multi-year gap between surveys with a near-continuous record and a capacity-loss trajectory. Where inflow and catchment delivery are well observed, it also supports short-range outlook on sediment-load and turbidity events tied to high-flow inputs — always with the uncertainty band attached.
