AquaSight taps computer vision to tell you if water is safe to drink

Sussing out water potability in the field is sometimes nigh impossible, depending on the remoteness of the region. The United Nations estimates that 2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world's water supply each day. And while a range of chemical kits can test for bacterial risks, not all are equally thorough. Even with recent technological advances, water pollution leads to roughly 9 million premature deaths a year and 16% of all deaths worldwide. This motivated a pair of researchers at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland to investigate an AI-powered Android app capable of detecting water impurity, which they describe in a newly published paper on the preprint server Arxiv.org