BluCarbon Analytics

Internet of H20

BigApps is the premier showcase of NYC’s tech ecosystem. It’s a competition that empowers New York’s sharpest minds to solve the city’s toughest challenges through technology, making NYC a better place to Live, Work, Learn, and Play. Whether you’re a hacker or a maker, a designer or an investor, a novice or a pro, we provide resources that make it easy to make a difference. Come to build. Come to network. Come to win.

NYC BigApps 2014 is an initiative of NYCEDC to promote government transparency and the creation of innovative new technologies. Following NYC BigApps 2013, this year’s event is the fifth annual run of the competition and is being managed by HR&A Advisors in collaboration with Super Vision and Splash.

Make NYC's fresh water system 100% transparent to raise awareness of conditions, sources, uses and treatment of our city's water supply.

BigIdea Partners

Our Challenge to You

We’ve partnered with some of New York City’s leading governmental agencies, private companies, and non-profit organizations to identify civic issues affecting the ways in which New Yorkers Live, Work, Learn, and Play in the city. Born from these issues, the following challenges and ideas are built to ensure your app has a lasting impact – and can even be adopted by a major organization (and maybe your newest client or employer).

And if you have your own idea, awesome! Create your app entry <insert link> and choose up to two of the four BigApps categories you think your app addresses.

Our Challenge to You

Today New York City delivers about 1.5 billion gallons of safe drinking water to over 8 million city residents and another 1 million consumers north of the city. The source of New York City’s drinking water is a network of 19 reservoirs, three controlled lakes in a 1,972-square-mile watershed, and a remarkable 6,000-mile network of pipes, shafts and subterranean aqueducts.

Built four decades ago, the city’s water system was regarded as some of America’s proudest engineering accomplishments. Today, this water infrastructure is in a state of disrepair that threatens its ability to continue to supply the city with safe and clean water. Furthermore, much of the existing wastewater infrastructure has deteriorated and is in need of repair or replacement.

Between the water supply and wastewater treatment systems are millions of New Yorkers and visitors to the city and an elaborate and hidden network of sewers and water mains. If we all had a real look at where our water comes from, how it's consumed and where it goes, we could motivate stakeholders to ﬁnd solutions to these problems. Everybody can help these systems run better by conserving water, disposing of garbage and household chemicals properly, and being concerned about water quantity and quality in the city’s surrounding waters.

Today the tools and resources exist to make this invisible process visible and achieve a high level of water transparency. Especially in New York City, where a new breed of entrepreneurs now has access to advancements in "data generation”, “genetic” sciences, cloud computing, “big data” mathematics, and visualization technologies that allow us to visualize, measure, model and manage the complex system that is water, ultimately ensuring the efﬁcient availability of fresh clean water for decades to come.

Product Wish List

AGGREGATE WATER- RELATED BIG DATA SETS
Because much of the testing for water and wastewater is conducted and financed by government entities there should be a lot of sources to pull from. At a minimum, the app/ site should indicate the geo-location of data and the source that provided the data. (see next page for list of data sets and sources).

PLATFORM FOR USER GENERATED CONTENT
Provide tools necessary for any user to upload water-related content within geolocated areas. This may or may not include photos or videos of waterways, rivers and streams and notes or details regarding water quality or visuals. A major goal would be to enable drone footage to be added now and into the future.

INTEGRATION OF AVAILABLE INDUSTRIAL DATA
The widespread adoption of a new standard protocol OPC-UA by industrial controls providers enables web-based applications to access XML data from industrial components (i.e. whether a valve is open or closed, a motor is on or off, the readings from sensors like flow meters.)

CONTENT AND INFORMATION TO BE GEO-LOCATED
The most important aspect of this tool is to make sure all content is properly geo-tagged, and/or that already geo-tagged information (i.e. a photo from a mobile phone) retains its location coordinates in order for it to be mapped or located on the app/site.

CLEANLY DESIGNED INFOGRAPHIC VISUALIZATION
Graphically illustrate for a user the location and context of content. You can use open-source mapping tools but ideally this visual representation would be some sort of data integration with corresponding media content (i.e. water test results overlaid onto drone footage of aqueducts).

INTUITIVE AND INTERACTIVE USER INTERFACE
Allow users to browse, search and view content in many different ways. Consumers would be able to track where their water might have come from and where it may end up. Wastewater treatment operators would be able to see upstream water, or relevant weather conditions that may affect their plant operation.

Prizes

Potential of $5k for app development.*

The winning team will also recieve a customized Aerial Drone Package (Including Quadcopter & GoPro). Similar to the configuration BluCarbon captures waterway footage with.
BluCarbon will work closely with team members and provide support for the duration of the state's PowerBridge Grant Fund Program (12 months).

The winning team will be mentioned in a future online Forbes Article.
*Product/solution must fulfill all BluCarbon requirements

Evaluation Criteria

• Scalability of App/Site in the future.
• Flexibility across various platforms.
• Simple & clean User interface design
• Automation - Data collection & display should be relatively hands-free.