Aquatic Informatics

Market position

Described as one of the largest water-focused software providers in the world and, by its own account, the world's largest water data management company, with more than 1,000 customers in 60 countries as of 2021. In 2015 the founder sized the global market for water data analytics and management at roughly $500 million, with North America about a quarter of that, and identified European vendors as the main competition in the U.S.

The company positions itself as the world's largest water data management company, spanning the full water cycle rather than a single segment, and combining time-series hydrometric analytics with regulatory compliance, pretreatment and utility asset/workflow management in one portfolio. Its software was co-developed closely with demanding public agencies such as the U.S. Geological Survey, with the company retaining the resulting intellectual property, and within Danaher it can be paired with instrumentation, chemicals and service.

Technology

The AQUARIUS suite ingests high-frequency data from field monitoring instruments and supports acquisition, processing, modeling, correction and publication of water time series, including tooling originally built with the USGS for river flow determination. Related products add automated data validation (HydroCorrect), compliance and electronic reporting (WaterTrax), wastewater pretreatment management (Linko), operations data management (WIMS, Rio) and real-time network intelligence and digital-twin style asset and workflow management (Sedaru). Public web technologies in use include Cloudflare, Microsoft 365, AngularJS, TypeScript, Marketo and Cypress.io.

Go-to-market

Sales focus on government agencies, water authorities and utilities, initially in British Columbia and then the larger U.S. market, won through competitive RFPs and long procurement cycles in a conservative, mission-critical buying environment. Customer education and engagement content such as the "Ask the Expert" series supports the installed base, and acquisitions have extended reach into new utility segments.

Environmental monitoring agencies and government bodies (e.g., U.S. Geological Survey, Water Survey of Canada, U.S. National Parks Service), water and wastewater utilities and municipalities, hydropower operators, mining companies, industrial pretreatment and backflow programs, consulting and engineering firms, and academic institutions such as the University of British Columbia and the Canadian National Research Council.

Geography

Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with offices in Denver, Colorado and Australia, and employees across North America, Oceania and Asia. Customers spanned 40 countries as of 2015 and 60 countries as of 2021, including markets such as Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

History

Edward (Ed) Quilty, formerly a stream ecologist with British Columbia's environment ministry and the operator of his own consulting business, founded Aquatic Informatics in Vancouver in 2003 while pursuing a PhD in hydro-informatics at the University of British Columbia. Early funding came from software sales to prior clients such as BC Environment, National Research Council IRAP grants and a friends-and-family round; a 2004 U.S. Geological Survey contract worth about half a million dollars established the business. A subsequent USGS project valued at more than $8 million drove hiring and international expansion, including an Australian office. Renewal Funds invested growth capital around 2013 and exited in July 2017, when XPV Water Partners acquired a controlling interest and financed the merger with Watermarq Technologies (WaterTrax and Linko Technology). In January of the year of its sale to Danaher, the company raised $8 million in debt financing from CIBC Innovation Banking for acquisitions; it acquired Sedaru Inc. in March 2021 and was itself acquired by Danaher, joining the Danaher Water Quality Platform. Later product releases included Rio (2022) and HydroCorrect (2023).