Qld water authority to run Australia's first utility-led water industry hackathon

Queensland Urban Utilities – responsible for the water supply and sewerage services for more than a quarter of Queensland’s population – is running Australia's first utility-led hackathon focused solely on the water industry.

The Queensland Government statutory authority – which manages water services forBrisbane,Ipswich,Lockyer Valley,Scenic Rim, andSomerset councils – is running the hackathon over a weekend later this month to bring together “developers, designers, engineers, scientists and everyone in between hellip; to hack water industry challenges”.

Participants will work to tackle a number of challenges around engineering, Internet of Things, Smart Cities, sustainability and Blockchain, before presenting their ideas to a panel of judges. Winners will take a share of $25,000 in prizes to “help turn their ideas in to reality” the organisers said.

The hackathon is backed by sponsors AECOM, Aurecon and Deloitte who are providing a combined $15,000 in prizes, while QueenslandUrban Utilitieswill award$10,000to the team that comes up with the best overall idea. The event will be hosted at Brisbane’s startup hub, Fishburners on February 23 to 25.

Amazon Web Services will be providing free access to its services for participants.

In July last year, the Australian Water Association ran its inaugural OzWater one-day Water Hack with backing from TechnologyOne in which participants including some from Sydney Water and Yarra Valley Water tackled challenges ranging from proactive condition assessment of water assets to creating value from unused SCADA data.