What a bunch of legends! Yesterday, I had the absolute pleasure of joining my talented FlowState teammates (Kayden Leftly, Jack Drummond, Fiona Wharton, Yannik Behr, Christof Mueller, Florent Aden) at the Aotearoa AI Summit, hosted by the incredible AI Forum NZ. After winning the Wellington AI for the Environment Hackathon, we were invited to pitch our solution to a room full of NZ’s leaders in AI and Data Science — and I’m thrilled to share that we WON! 🎉
Our solution targets a huge issue: Wellington is losing 41% of its water supply to leaks—about 64 MILLION litres every single day. Water is life, and we need to protect our most precious resource!
The problem is complex, with limited resources (an estimated cost of $1 billion a year for the next decade) and crucial info needed to identify underground leaks that aren't visible on the surface. These hidden leaks pose serious risks, like sinkholes, which threaten both the environment and public safety.
That’s where FlowState comes in. We developed a system that uses Neural Networks, based on a synthetic dataset, to detect 90% of these leaks. Our solution aims to help decision-makers map and prioritize repairs, ensuring resources are directed where they’ll have the biggest impact.
A massive shoutout to the AI Forum, all the speakers, the other hackathon contestants (who also had some brilliant ideas!), sponsors, and everyone involved in organizing the event. The AI Forum has done an epic job of bringing the community together!
I believe the hackathon approach is an incredible way to get passionate people together, cultivate innovation, and rapidly hack out an MVP for important environmental challenges like this. It would be amazing to see more of this approach driving innovation across New Zealand.
If you're involved in water management, funding, AI solutions for sustainability, or have any suggestions on how we can move this project forward, please get in touch!
LFG 🚀
Tim Bradley Megan Tapsell Madeline Newman Sarah Sun Maria Mingallon Hon Judith Collins KC MP Callaghan Innovation Engineering New Zealand Te Ao Rangahau
#AotearoaAISummit #AIForGood #SustainableTech #WaterConservation
#FlowState #AIHackathon #GraphNeuralNetworks
Data Quality Manager chez Hager Group
1moCongratulations Niklas 💡 🍾🏆 Great achievement made by your super cross function team. AI generated data is definitely promising and could be the solution to answer the increasing demand and complete missing data. It's only the beginning! Bravo