WaterHackathon London

Water Hackathon 2011


Challenging water experts and software developers from
around the world to co-create the innovative solutions
needed to help solve today's water problems.

 

 

Event Host:







Event Sponsors:















Supporting Organisations:

Registration Deadline: 
Friday, October 21, 2011
Hackathon Location: 
UCL, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, Chadwick Building, Room G04
Hackathon Details: 

The WaterHackathon will take place at UCL's Chadwick Building (2C on map) on October 21st (from 12h) and 22nd (until 18h), 2011. Food will be provided for participants. Please bring a laptop and power cord. We will start the day with a few short 'problem presentations' from global water managers (IUCN, WaterWise, IBM, WWF, ... ).

Schedule:

Friday Oct. 21
12:00 Start, distribution of pizza, distribution of T-shirts, and mixing around of groups
until people find a cool problem that’s right for them
19:00 – Coding fuel in the form of burritos and other Mexican food,
20:00 or 24:00 - Last programmers head home
 
Saturday October 22
9:00 Tea, coffee, breakfast
12:30 Sandwiches
17:00 Present hacks and apps to judges
18:00 Prizes
19:00 Off to Pub!
Event Leads: 
Julien Harou
Problems We Are Working On: 
Water monitor: Refining water use to improve the quality of aquatic ecosystems
How to incentivise water use efficiency? A social network water footprint game (WaterVille?)
'Map the Crap' App
Ceasefire in the Toilet War? Can a community-driven mobile phone application restore dignity to sanitation in Cape Town?
Stop job losses. Catch thieves. eBilling (& eFiling) for small town water. An application with both NGO and commercial potential - H2O-PEN!
Where does my water come from?
Innovative Water Footprint Visualization
Waterwise 'Stop the Drop' Game App
Ecosystem Services Must be Taken into Policy Circles
How to choose among water supply-demand options?
Online Water Trading Map-based Portal
Overflow App for Android-based Huawei IDEOS smartphone [Tanzania]
Related Sponsors: 

UI/UX design support provided by Azavea

Event Updates

Oct 25

London Water Hackathon wrap-up

Published by Julien Harou

The Oct. 21-22 2011 London Water Hackathon was a fun and successful event that attracted a total of over 40 developers and water problem solvers.  We're grateful to our sponsors: UCL Grand Challenges and the UCL Environment Institute and to our supporters: Google, IBM and AKVO.

Don't miss this short slide-show of event photographs (2nd day photos only sorry). Also, some video interviews are up on the AKVO blog:  (thanks Mark).
 
At noon on Oct. 21 the event kicked off with short introductory talks by Mark Charmer (akvo.org), Deepak Bhatia (World Bank), and hosts Julien Harou (UCL) and Emmanuel Letier (UCL). Over pizza, programmers and problem definers soon settled into 4 groups which after 30 mad hours produced 4 projects/products:
 
The vision is an app that allows you to compare you water consumption with others in your social network, your street, etc.  Objective is to make consumers aware of the water demands implied by their choices.
 
Imagine logging in and seeing the price of water mapped all over the world.  An initial iPad app was made to investigate how this could work and what data needs and outputs could be relevant.
 
How do you plan 20 or 50 years of water supply and demand management (water conservation) interventions to minimise capital, operating, social & environmental costs while guaranteeing supply > demand with sufficient reliability.  This HydroPlatform app does it in 1 page of code!
 
Congratulations to the Taarifa 10-person team.  In 30 hours of non-stop development they produced a functional website and app!  Their work is designed to enhance the Ushahidi citizen reporting system to enable better managed sanitation complaints in Tanzania (soon globally). 
 
Our judging panel was composed of:
  • Sarah Bell, Senior lecturer in Civil & Environmental Engineering, UCL
  • Mark Charmer, AKVO.org
  • Phil Hewinson, Google Android
  • Emmanuel Letier, Lecturer in Computer Science, UCL
These pictures show the festive and intense 1.5hr presentation session!  The panel posed tough questions but in the end was supportive of all submissions.  Prizes consisted of lots of Google gear and an IBM global conference call to promote the winning project, and a beer & good cheer at the local pub.  See you at the next one!
 
 

 

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Oct 21

London Hack in full swing; focus on 3 very different projects

Published by Julien Harou

The group here has coalesced around 3 major problems: sanitation mapping, water trading platform and a social network water game. Some coders plan to go through the night. Energy is high. Breakfast is at 9:30. Cheers, Julien
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