Talking Climate · The Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy

28: Conversation with the Water Resources Hackathon 1st Place Team "SmartFLOW"

·21 min·1 clip

Water managers are interested in these tools, but Tyler says there is still a gap between interest and use.

Ross Chablis opens from the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah. He sets the scene at the center's third annual Climate Solutions Hackathon, held at the end of January and focused this year on water resources. The hackathon asked U of U undergraduate and graduate students from any discipline to team up and build a slide-deck proposal in 24 hours. Teams chose from five categories: municipal water supply, inland and coastal flooding, agriculture, drought, and water and energy infrastructure. Judges graded each project on problem definition and analysis, uniqueness and innovation, and idea feasibility, implementation, and scalability. More than 90 students participated. Seventeen projects were submitted. Only the top three teams received awards. The winners were Sam Carter, Bailey Olds, and Tyler Joklovich. They are graduate students studying hydrology. Their solution was called Smart Flow City Program. The conversation follows a proposal that tries to bridge that gap through a State Department of Environmental Quality. Tyler Joklovich says water managers are very interested in using these tools. The problem, as he and Sam Carter describe it, is the gap between that interest and the work municipal staff actually have to do. Carter contrasts the broader academic aim of gathering knowledge for understanding and protecting ecosystems with the immediate municipal job of getting water to people. The team wants a program that encourages water managers to use the tools while also contributing to broader understanding. They point to drinking water source protection and Clean Water Act compliance as places where the program could fit. Financial incentives, or even just making things easier on a regulatory level, are part of the pitch. They also mention future slides that touch on open-source data and on making sure everyone benefits. Ross Chablis lets the team work through the logic, then they close by talking about the difficulty of turning 37 slides into a four-minute talk and the value of a simpler case study.

As heard by us

A water hackathon becomes a practical discussion of municipal incentives, compliance, and scale.

Talking Climate follows the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy's third annual Climate Solutions Hackathon into a water-resources debate that stays practical from start to finish.

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Why you'd press play

You want a climate episode about a water-resources hackathon, municipal water reality, and a 24-hour deadline.

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