As Royal Life Saving initiatives continue to encourage more people to access and enjoy our waterways safely, we have recently partnered with Sydney Water to support their Urban Plunge project. Launched in late November, the concept is to provide accessible swimming areas to people all over Sydney, with the first of their pop-up container pools launched in Prospect.

Swimming in healthy local waterways is the future that the Urban Plunge team is bringing to life through this exciting Sydney Water project. Urban Plunge has been designed to accelerate the delivery of more swimming and recreation opportunities in the rivers, creeks, lakes and inlets of our cities and suburbs.

Urban Plunge Tech Summit, held recently at Parramatta Square on 25th November, was all about the techniques and technology to enable urban swimming.

Image credit: Sydney Water

One piece if technology that is of particular interest is The SAFETY.NODE. The SAFETY.NODE provides real-time visualisation (via CCTV) and response capabilities (Help Assist, Public Address System and outbound communication) that take lifesaving, community activation and emergency response to a new level. With Inland water ways contributing to the highest rates of drownings in NSW, this exciting innovation leads the way in drowning prevention technology where lifeguarding services are not available. The first Safety Node is set to be trialed in the next year with the aim to then place these safety devices in key swimming areas around inland waterways.

View more on this exciting technology here