Visibility in the water is a safety factor in both recreational and commercial diving as well as a large factor in the enjoyment of recreational diving. Visibility can be affected by many factors or variables which can be measured from space. To enable the use of earth observation data in these user focused downstream services we will create a location based middleware web service that provides near real time (NRT) visibility information for a specific location based on EO data.

Using knowledge about how certain substances, such as one of the main pigments of the phytoplankton (Chlorophyll a - Chl a) alter the colour of the water, these parameters can be derived from optial Earth Observation (EO) satellite sensors. Water Insight provides monitoring services of Chl a based on EO data which is validated with in situmeasurements. Also the maps of WFD phytoplankton biomass status classes are created, by application of the WFD tresholds on Chl a as a proxy for phytoplankton biomass. The maps are made available in a portal, which allows to follow the lakes in time, zoom and download maps and time series.