The Cleveland Water Alliance continues to expand and improve their smart buoy network that gathers vital information. This year they collected 10 million data points. The system that makes Lake Erie the world’s largest digitally connected body of freshwater.
“There's nothing like it anywhere else in the world, and we have an opportunity to continue evolving that so that we're hosting world class innovations here for the next 50 years,” said Ebie Holst, the Director of Clusters and Innovation for the Cleveland Water Alliance.
The buoys create a test bed, attracting companies developing new freshwater technology. And by partnering with Team NEO and other organizations, the alliance hopes to bring industries that use large amounts of water to the region.
“We launched the program over the last year to actually start attracting large water intensive companies here,” said Bryan Stubbs, the Executive Director and President, Cleveland Water Alliance. “To go out worldwide and say what companies use a lot of water, and if we're attracting them here, how do we do that as a collective system?”
This would include items like EV batteries, semiconductors, food, metals and polymers.
