Team Name:
Team 1895
Team Members:
Team 1895
Problem Statement:
Water and produce are critical resources on our planet. With the food and water crisis affecting many communities, we as a community need to ensure that there are enough resources available for future generations. Moreton Bay, Unity Water and ESG recognise that they have challenges in effective water consumption and protecting our green environment.
Solution/Idea
The solution addresses three challenges: Digitisation of water, Moreton Bay greening and Creative use of data for ESG
Our solution, named GreenWe, leverages community gardens and maps their physical state and data to a virtual community garden app. The purpose is to create awareness about how effective utilisation of water and sustainable gardening in Queensland can help communities to better protect and flourish the planet. It highlights the different stakeholders’ role in building sustainable practices using a community garden. GreenWe provides an interactive approach for everyone to view the data in response to ESG challenges
Tools used are Tableau, Figma, Microsoft PowerPoint and Photoshop.
GreenWe Functions
Using its app, GreenWe provides visibility to the current and historic environmental conditions within a local area. From this visibility, it prompts participation from local communities to take accountability and participate/ spearhead in their community garden’s sustainable development initiatives.
Raise Awareness
• Average water consumption by postcode
• Tier of Community Garden
• Weather conditions and alerts
• Flora and fauna present
Participate
• Virtually and physically contribute to community gardens
• Participate in local community and brand events
• Act following council advise for sustainable development
• Adopt sustainable living practices
Hybrid Interaction Model
The GreenWe app relies on both the virtual and physical garden to accomplish its sustainable development goals.
Virtual Garden
Unitywater datasets would feed into the app. GreenWe would have 5 levels which are Platinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, and Rock Bottom where Copper and Rock Bottom indicate there is an urgent need for a suburb to plant more trees. Silver and Gold indicates the suburb is progressing towards the desired sustainable development goals and needs a little more effort. Platinum indicates an excellent environment created with the most effective water consumption. The higher the level, higher the efficacy of water utilisation and sustainable practices.
Physical Garden:
At several checkpoints, there will be barcodes placed for the residents to scan. They can enter their suburb postcode to check at which level they are.
Each of the levels represents the state of the efficacy of the water consumption leading to a greener area. These levels would be assigned at a suburb level. Here is one of the use cases:
1. John goes to the park
2. Scans the barcode- checks the level of suburb (Alternatively, can check on regional website as well)
3. He enters his postcode “4178”
4. App shows Copper Rock Bottom (which means the area is not green enough due to water wastage resulting into less water for park maintenance)
5. John feels the need to upgrade to the next level and participates in the plant building activities.
Users would also be able to create a profile and link their postcodes for continuous engagement with their local community members for their community garden. Unitywater would also send the analysed suburb level data to Moreton Bay regional council. Based on this data, Moreton Bay would be able to decide which suburb needs the most attention. Accordingly, they can plan and encourage park activities to plant trees and other related initiatives.
Analytics
Below image shows the average of daily water usage by postcode.
Below image shows the sum of daily water usage by postcode with the regional map.
Below image shows a comparison of monthly water usage by user id. This analysis would be useful for managing water usage of individual water units and encouraging the community’s green activities.
Below image shows the changes in the number of nine flora groups from 2019 to 2021. This analysis would help communities to figure out not only how much flora they have protected and increased or lost through the community garden activities but also develop future green protection initiatives for Moreton Bay.
Roles
The community garden has three main roles which are the:
• Council Members: View and advice on sustainability initiatives related to the garden.
• Community Garden Leader: Individuals who moderate garden activity and spearhead sustainability initiatives.
• Gardeners: Participants who plant their crops virtually and physically
Benefits to Communities and Individuals
The virtual and physical community garden would:
• Promote health and wellbeing initiatives:
o Physical exercise
o Peace and relaxation
o Fresh produce for healthy diet
o Improve food security
• Networking opportunities and enhancement of community communication
o Community forum
o News, notifications, and alerts
o Community events
• Establishes a sense of belonging
o Get to know your neighbours
o Form friendships/ trust within a community
• Encourage individuals to work towards creating a sustainable future
o Establish accountability for water intake and environmental impacts
• Promote cultural diversity
• Financial benefit
o Fresh produce for low cost
o Returning profits to the local community from the sale of surplus produce
• Local brand collaboration initiatives
o Bunnings
Benefits to flora and fauna
Also, the community garden would:
● Help improve air and soil quality
● Increase biodiversity of plants and animals
● Secure habitats for various wildlife
● Promote sustainable agriculture
Future Recommendations
Although it is recommended to leverage the existing community gardens, more community gardens can be physically built following stakeholder engagement.
• Scalability: Project expansion from an individual level to country level
• State Department, businesses, and country level initiatives and collaboration efforts:
o Consider governance, risk and compliance
o Develop action plans
o Promote rewards and benefits programs:
E.g.: Solar panel incentives for individuals or businesses which implement and utilise them
o Map and monitor sustainable development goals
E.g.: Reduce water consumption in a suburb by 10%; Increase planting efforts by 10%
Description of Use This data is to be used to track koalas populations and activity
Description of Use This data would be fed into the App to manage and control water consumption and encourage water-saving activities by showing a comparison of monthly usage
Description of Use This data would be fed into the App to manage and control water consumption and encourage water-saving activities by showing a comparison of monthly usage
Description of Use This data would be fed into the App to understand the water consumption and relate it to suburb
Description of Use The data would be used for future app development to predict flood or weather-impacted roads.
Description of Use The data would be used for future app development for capturing load condition data from IoT devices.
Description of Use Communities are able to figure out how much flora they have protected, lost and increased every year. These tangible results will lead to more community participation and efforts.
Description of Use Communities are able to figure out how much flora they have protected, lost and increased every year. These tangible results will lead to more community participation and efforts.
Description of Use This data would be used to raise awareness about • Weather conditions and alerts
Eligibility: Must use a least one Australian relevant dataset - combining datasets preferred.
Go to Challenge | 31 teams have entered this challenge.
Eligibility: Open to everyone. Must use the Unitywater dataset. Must use at least one other dataset.
Go to Challenge | 11 teams have entered this challenge.
Eligibility: Open to everyone. Employees of Moreton Bay Regional Council with a direct working relationship with members of the local Moreton Bay GovHack node organising committee are ineligible to apply for this prize. If unsure, please feel welcome to check-in on Slack and discuss via the #hack-moreton-bay and #talk-mbrc channels upon commencement of the event.
Go to Challenge | 9 teams have entered this challenge.
