Meet the Lume

The Lume is the first single-unit fluorimetric sensor for continuous microbial contamination monitoring. Its integrated power and data transmission reduce deployment and maintenance costs while delivering higher sensitivity and accuracy than other sensors or traditional sampling methods.

Continuous, Real-Time Microbial Water Quality Monitoring

Public health and pollution-response decisions depend on timely, spatially resolved information. Traditional culture-based sampling typically delivers results 24–48 hours after collection and is often too sparse to capture short-lived or localized contamination events. As a result, many contamination pulses remain undetected, limiting the effectiveness of advisories, mitigation efforts, and operational responses. Lume addresses this gap by providing continuous data that reflect actual conditions as they change.

Lume directly measures tryptophan-like fluorescence and applies data-driven modeling to estimate microbial contamination risk in near real time. Each sensor operates autonomously and transmits data via cellular or satellite networks to a secure cloud platform, where results are available through dashboards and APIs. For the cost of a single grab sample, Lume can deliver thousands of in-situ microbial estimates, dramatically improving temporal coverage between laboratory measurements.

Proven Performance for Microbial Risk Assessment

Field and laboratory evaluations demonstrate that Lume provides reliable quantitative and categorical estimates of microbial contamination across environmentally relevant concentration ranges. Across multiple independently deployed sensors, model-estimated E. coli concentrations closely align with laboratory reference methods over approximately three orders of magnitude. Agreement is strongest at moderate-to-high concentrations that drive public health risk, with consistent performance observed across sensors, sites, and hydrologic conditions.

At very low concentrations, increased uncertainty reflects known limitations of both optical measurements and culture-based enumeration methods, reinforcing Lume’s role as a real-time screening and decision-support tool rather than a replacement for laboratory confirmation.

Out-of-the-box performance can achieve at least 75% accuracy on a continuous, linear scale across 0-1,000 CFU/100 mL compared to culture based methods, while site-specific calibrated categorical classifications can exceed 90% prediction accuracy. This level of performance minimizes the likelihood of missing meaningful contamination events while avoiding unnecessary alarms near advisory thresholds.

What Lume Enables

Continuous microbial data from Lume allow organizations to move from reactive to proactive water quality management. By capturing rapid changes that occur between laboratory samples, Lume supports earlier detection of contamination events, improved situational awareness during storms and infrastructure failures, and more confident decision-making.

Organizations use Lume to detect contamination as it occurs, support same-day recreational water advisories, continuously screen source and receiving waters between lab analyses, prioritize confirmatory sampling, and reduce uncertainty between sampling campaigns. These capabilities support more timely and transparent communication with stakeholders and the public.

Real-World Applications

Lume is deployed across a range of monitoring contexts, including drinking water source protection, wastewater discharge monitoring, and recreational water management. Typical applications include monitoring piped systems, private and community wells, filtration and disinfection processes, treated effluent and receiving waters, urban stormwater and combined sewer overflow systems, and agricultural return flows. In recreational settings such as rivers, beaches, parks, and marinas, Lume supports public-facing dashboards, automated alerts, and adaptive management of high-use areas.

Built on Science. Ready for Scale.

Lume builds on peer-reviewed research and multi-site field validation to address the limitations of traditional microbial monitoring approaches. By combining optical sensing with adaptive data modeling, Lume maintains performance under changing environmental conditions where static thresholds and infrequent sampling fall short.

Whether protecting drinking water sources or managing recreational waters, Lume provides the confidence to act faster, earlier, and with better information.