What is the Erie Hack
The Erie Hack is a data and engineering competition that unites coders, developers, engineers, and water experts to generate enduring solutions to Lake Erie’s biggest challenges. The competition includes $100,000 in prizes for the most creative and effective hacks. Working from challenge statements derived from ideation sessions with NASA representatives and regional stakeholders, teams are charged with creating innovative digital tools, hardware innovations, and engineering solutions that build “the Blue Economy”: the emergent economic sector dedicated to the sustainable stewardship of bodies of freshwater around the globe. The Erie Hack provides regional high school students, college students, and professionals the opportunity to combine their own expertise with solid mentoring to create technologies with the potential to invigorate Lake Erie’s environment and economy.
The Erie Hack launches February 23 with public unveiling of the data portal and opening of team registration. Regional meet-ups in Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Toledo bring together teams of participants ranging from high school students to seasoned professionals. Once rosters are set, teams select a challenge statement and the corresponding toolkit assembled by their regional research partner. Mentors help teams construct data-driven solutions to present at the challenge on April 13 in Detroit, where a panel of experts selects eight teams to advance to Cleveland for the May 2-3 Erie Hack Innovation Summit.
The Erie Hack is sponsored by the Cleveland Water Alliance, DigitalC, and GE. See the full list of sponsors here
CHALLENGE STATEMENTS
Beginning in fall 2016 Cleveland Water Alliance has worked with the Creativity and Innovation Team at NASA Glenn Research Center to develop a unique collaborative idea generation process. These “Ideation Sessions” were designed around the goal of identifying the most pressing challenges facing the Lake Erie Basin. Since that time, representatives of over 150 water and technology organizations have participated in these sessions, contributing their expertise to the issue identification process. This process gave birth to six core Challenge Statements for the Erie Hack.
The Challenge Statements are, in many ways, the guiding force of the Erie Hack. Each and every participating team will choose one or more challenge statements to “hack” with their projects. Each statement addresses a broad area of concern as well as a few possible entry points for a technical solution. Teams’ effectiveness in creating a viable solution in the space they have chosen will be essential to their success in the competition.
Read the Challenge Statement titles below or click here for the full text
Mitigate Nutrient Loading and Its Environmental Impacts
Reduce and Remediate Urban Pollution
Cultivate Resilience in Water Infrastructure Systems
Manage Aging Water Infrastructure Systems
Connect Communities to the Value of Water
Drive the Creation of Meaningful Data
Data
In order to maximize the impact of each and every team’s project, the Cleveland Water Alliance is partnering with DigitalC to curate a robust collection of data sets and tools relevant to the competition’s Challenge Statements. Comprised of data from a broad range of academic, government, and private sources throughout the Basin, this resource will inform and empower teams’ efforts to create the most innovative coding and engineering solutions for our lake.
Go to Sponsors to see the various stakeholders in the public and private sectors that make the Erie Hack possible by stocking the toolkits with a variety of datasets
Staff from DigitalC provide the portal for the datasets that correspond to each challenge statement, as well as ongoing support for each team.
Click here to access the Erie Hack data portal.
If you are interested in contributing data to the Erie Hack, please contact Cleveland Water Alliance at ErieHack@clewa.org
Past Success
The Erie Hack draws on an established tradition of water technology innovation competitions that originated in 2011 with the “Water Hackathon,” a collaboration between the World Bank, NASA, and digital giants like Microsoft and Google. This international movement began with the crazy idea of bringing subject matter experts and software developers together to look at age-old problems in new ways. With a wealth of expertise and urgency worldwide, water was a clear choice for the focus area. With this, Water Hackathon was born and the way we think about water technology has never been the same.
Inspired by the Water Hackathon vision, Cleveland Water Alliance and its partners aim to leverage the tools and best practices of the program in a much more targeted way. Erie Hack will use a similar framework (building an ecosystem of interdisciplinary collaborations around water technology development) but we want to alter it in two important ways. First, we want to expand beyond “apps.” We believe that the term “apps” not only fails to capture the power of truly useful digital tools, it excludes an essential skill set that has deep roots in both technological innovation and water: engineering. We don’t just want solutions that exist on a screen, we want solutions that we can touch and feel, that can directly alter our environment and serve as physical reminder of our commitment our most precious resource. Second, we want to narrow and deepen the scope of the project. We want to focus the tools of a global movement a single body of water, the body of water that is the backbone of our regional environment, economy, and society: Lake Erie.
The Water Hackathon was a momentous success with over 65 partner organizations engaged, 10 hacking days held in 10 cities across the world, and 62 working prototypes delivered at the end of the competition. The Erie Hack will build on this legacy by generating new solutions and value for the Lake Erie Basin.
If you would like to learn more about Water Hackathon, you can check out the white paper here.
If you would like to learn more about how you can support the Erie Hack, visit our Partner space here.
Summit
May 2 & 3 2017
The Erie Hack concludes on May 2-3 with the Water Technology Innovation Summit. This landmark event will include keynote speakers, expert panels, breakout discussions, and technical workshops focused on the various sectors of the burgeoning Blue Economy in the Great Lakes Region and across the world. A separate website with registration, scheduling, and other details for the summit will be live shortly.
What is the Erie Hack
The Erie Hack is a data and engineering competition that unites coders, developers, engineers, and water experts to generate enduring solutions to Lake Erie’s biggest challenges. The competition includes $100,000 in prizes for the most creative and effective hacks. Working from challenge statements derived from ideation sessions with NASA representatives and regional stakeholders, teams are charged with creating innovative digital tools, hardware innovations, and engineering solutions that build “the Blue Economy”: the emergent economic sector dedicated to the sustainable stewardship of bodies of freshwater around the globe. The Erie Hack provides regional high school students, college students, and professionals the opportunity to combine their own expertise with solid mentoring to create technologies with the potential to invigorate Lake Erie’s environment and economy.
The Erie Hack launches February 23 with public unveiling of the data portal and opening of team registration. Regional meet-ups in Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Toledo bring together teams of participants ranging from high school students to seasoned professionals. Once rosters are set, teams select a challenge statement and the corresponding toolkit assembled by their regional research partner. Mentors help teams construct data-driven solutions to present at the challenge on April 13 in Detroit, where a panel of experts selects eight teams to advance to Cleveland for the May 2-3 Erie Hack Innovation Summit.
The Erie Hack is sponsored by the Cleveland Water Alliance, DigitalC, and GE. See the full list of sponsors here
CHALLENGE STATEMENTS
Beginning in fall 2016 Cleveland Water Alliance has worked with the Creativity and Innovation Team at NASA Glenn Research Center to develop a unique collaborative idea generation process. These “Ideation Sessions” were designed around the goal of identifying the most pressing challenges facing the Lake Erie Basin. Since that time, representatives of over 150 water and technology organizations have participated in these sessions, contributing their expertise to the issue identification process. This process gave birth to six core Challenge Statements for the Erie Hack.
The Challenge Statements are, in many ways, the guiding force of the Erie Hack. Each and every participating team will choose one or more challenge statements to “hack” with their projects. Each statement addresses a broad area of concern as well as a few possible entry points for a technical solution. Teams’ effectiveness in creating a viable solution in the space they have chosen will be essential to their success in the competition.
Read the Challenge Statement titles below or click here for the full text
Mitigate Nutrient Loading and Its Environmental Impacts
Reduce and Remediate Urban Pollution
Cultivate Resilience in Water Infrastructure Systems
Manage Aging Water Infrastructure Systems
Connect Communities to the Value of Water
Drive the Creation of Meaningful Data
Data
In order to maximize the impact of each and every team’s project, the Cleveland Water Alliance is partnering with DigitalC to curate a robust collection of data sets and tools relevant to the competition’s Challenge Statements. Comprised of data from a broad range of academic, government, and private sources throughout the Basin, this resource will inform and empower teams’ efforts to create the most innovative coding and engineering solutions for our lake.
Go to Sponsors to see the various stakeholders in the public and private sectors that make the Erie Hack possible by stocking the toolkits with a variety of datasets
Staff from DigitalC provide the portal for the datasets that correspond to each challenge statement, as well as ongoing support for each team.
Click here to access the Erie Hack data portal.
If you are interested in contributing data to the Erie Hack, please contact Cleveland Water Alliance at ErieHack@clewa.org
Past Success
The Erie Hack draws on an established tradition of water technology innovation competitions that originated in 2011 with the “Water Hackathon,” a collaboration between the World Bank, NASA, and digital giants like Microsoft and Google. This international movement began with the crazy idea of bringing subject matter experts and software developers together to look at age-old problems in new ways. With a wealth of expertise and urgency worldwide, water was a clear choice for the focus area. With this, Water Hackathon was born and the way we think about water technology has never been the same.
Inspired by the Water Hackathon vision, Cleveland Water Alliance and its partners aim to leverage the tools and best practices of the program in a much more targeted way. Erie Hack will use a similar framework (building an ecosystem of interdisciplinary collaborations around water technology development) but we want to alter it in two important ways. First, we want to expand beyond “apps.” We believe that the term “apps” not only fails to capture the power of truly useful digital tools, it excludes an essential skill set that has deep roots in both technological innovation and water: engineering. We don’t just want solutions that exist on a screen, we want solutions that we can touch and feel, that can directly alter our environment and serve as physical reminder of our commitment our most precious resource. Second, we want to narrow and deepen the scope of the project. We want to focus the tools of a global movement a single body of water, the body of water that is the backbone of our regional environment, economy, and society: Lake Erie.
The Water Hackathon was a momentous success with over 65 partner organizations engaged, 10 hacking days held in 10 cities across the world, and 62 working prototypes delivered at the end of the competition. The Erie Hack will build on this legacy by generating new solutions and value for the Lake Erie Basin.
If you would like to learn more about Water Hackathon, you can check out the white paper here.
If you would like to learn more about how you can support the Erie Hack, visit our Partner space here.
Summit
May 2 & 3 2017
The Erie Hack concludes on May 2-3 with the Water Technology Innovation Summit. This landmark event will include keynote speakers, expert panels, breakout discussions, and technical workshops focused on the various sectors of the burgeoning Blue Economy in the Great Lakes Region and across the world. A separate website with registration, scheduling, and other details for the summit will be live shortly.