RELEASE: WRI India announces the winners of the Wave2Web Hackathon that aims to develop to predictive models to estimate reservoir water availability in advance

Bengaluru, October 4, 2021: The finalists of the Wave2Web Hack – A Data Science and Predictive Modelling Hackathon, were announced today at a virtual Town Hall. WRI India, in partnership with Microsoft and BlackRock, had organized the hackathon to crowdsource innovative ideas to forecast water availability/water level in select reservoirs in Bengaluru. The dashboards, presented by the teams, predict reservoir water availability up to 1 to 3 months in advance to enable more robust water management. Meet the 3 winning teams:

• First Prize - Team H2Ox
  An interdisciplinary collaborative team from the University of Oxford – who bring together diverse expertise including machine learning experts, water resources, flood and drought scientists, geospatial data engineer and climate risk scientist. H2Ox always had the end user in mind. They had clear examples of how an end user could trailer the approach to fit their own needs
• Second Prize - Team Aqrity
  This team is an impact-driven deep tech startup, working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, data science, geoinformatics, earth sciences, water resources and environmental management. AQRITY went beyond expectations by integrating a semi-distributed hydrologic model into their predictive model. Great balance of water resources and data science expertise.
• Third Prize – Team Poseidon
  This team is a cross-functional team of young industry professionals and early career academics. They have an impressive “self-learning” model approach –where the model updates itself as new data comes in IF that data improves model performance.

Supported by Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), Government of Karnataka, the event saw the participation of Dr. Manoj Rajan, Commissioner, Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) and Director, KSNDMC, Revenue Department (Disaster Management), Government of Karnataka and Shri S. L. Meena, Director- Water Management Directorate, Central Water Commission, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India.

The Wave3Web hackathon received 2,130 registrations from across the globe with participants ranging from data scientists, data analysts, hydrologists, geospatial experts to young data enthusiast professionals.

Samrat Basak, Director, Urban Water Resilience from WRI India said, “Many cities in the global south face unreliable and inadequate supply of freshwater due to rapidly growing urban populations and increased competition for water, coupled with climate change driven uncertain water cycle. There is an urgent need for bringing in innovative data analytics using artificial intelligence and machine learning along with democratizing such data analytics to inform better governance and management of water resources.”

At the launch Dr. Manoj Rajan, Commissioner, KSDMA and Director, KSNDMC, Revenue Department (Disaster Management), Government of Karnataka and Shri S. L. Meena, Director- Water Management Directorate, Central Water Commission, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India were present.

Know more about the selection process and the hackathon here: https://www.wricitiesindia.org/content/wave2web-hack

About WRI India Ross Center
WRI India Ross Center is a research organization that works with governments, businesses, multilateral institutions and civil society groups to develop practical solutions that improve people’s lives and protect nature. WRI India Ross Center is dedicated to supporting Indian cities in their journey to be low carbon, resilient and inclusive. Know more - www.wricitiesindia.org