Sampling partners

If your group, club or laboratory tests the water where people swim, SwimSignal can show your results beside its forecast, credited to you, and use them to check how well the forecast works. This page says how.

Why your samples matter

A forecast can only be judged against real samples. The Environment Agency samples designated bathing waters from May to September. That leaves most river and lake spots with no samples at all, and no way to tell whether a forecast for them is any good. Regular samples taken by a local group fill that gap.

The first partner is Ambleside Action for a Future. Its weekly samples at Waterhead, Windermere, are on this site with its permission.

What you send

One spreadsheet row for each sample: where and when it was taken, the E. coli and intestinal enterococci results and whether each is a plate count or a most probable number, the laboratory and its method, the method's detection limits, and the permissions below. The format explains each column, and there is a blank template to fill in. It is the same format SwimSignal uses for any lab results an organisation sends.

• Give the result as the laboratory reported it. If it says "less than 10", write that, not 0.
• Name the sampling point and give its position. If you are not sure of the exact point, say so.
• Name the person who took the sample only by their role, such as "club volunteer". We do not need names.

Email the file to hello@swimsignal.co.uk. A form on this page will follow.

Two permissions, asked separately

Publishing

Whether we may show your results on SwimSignal and include them in its open data files, under a licence you choose, with your credit beside them.

Testing the forecast

Whether we may use your results to check SwimSignal's forecast, and publish how it did.

You can give either without the other, and take either back by email at any time. Results you take back leave the site at its next update.

Agree the test before you sample

A fair test needs samples nobody chose after seeing them. If we agreed to use your samples only after looking at the results, the test could end up with the weeks that make a forecast look good, or bad, without anyone meaning it to. So for a fair test we agree in writing, before the season starts, that every sample you take at your points from a given date will be used. Samples taken before that agreement can still be shown, and used to explore, but we label any comparison on them as exploratory.

What we do with a file

1. We check it against the format and tell you about anything we cannot read. We never change your values.
2. We confirm the permissions with you by email.
3. Only then do the results reach the site, credited to you and to your laboratory.

How your results are shown

• As measurements at one place, at the time each sample was taken: not the water today, and not the rest of the river or lake.
• With your name, the laboratory and the method, and a note that SwimSignal did not take or check the samples.
• Never as a bathing water rating, a pass, or a sign that the water is safe. A single sample cannot say that.
• Apart from the forecast. Your results do not change the forecast's risk level.

Your contact details

We keep your email address to reply about your results and for nothing else. The privacy notice covers email to SwimSignal.

Questions: hello@swimsignal.co.uk.