Winning proposal of the WaterChallenge, MOIST

The WaterChallenge took place during March 2022.  Several teams from across Europe worked on answering the main challenge question: Come up with ways to visualise the data of the SCOREwater project, plus enrich it with external data sources, to make it interesting and useful for citizens. This lead to interesting contributions which were all judged by a jury. The winning proposal was created by a team of four,  going with the team name “Moist”.

About MOIST

Moist is an app that shows you exactly when it is time to water your garden, the duration of watering and how much water is needed. This way you can enjoy a beautiful blooming garden without too much precious drinking water being wasted. On the one hand, this is beneficial for citizens, but also for the water companies, so that they can see exactly when the water demand is greatest.

In order to arrive at a tailor-made watering advice, use is made of geographical open data such as soil type, groundwater levels, rainfall and temperature. This is supplemented by local data from sensors from the SCOREwater project such as soil moisture measurements and electric conductivity. You only need to fill in your address and MOIST does the rest.

Opportunities

MOIST is designed to make open data and SCOREwater data available to citizens. But they are not the only ones who will benefit from the app

The app shows exactly when the water demand will be the greatest. This is valuable information for drinking water companies. This allows them to respond smarter to the water demand. For example, by filling their reserves when spraying days are coming The app can also smooth out peaks in water demand by offering different users different watering times.
There have been talks with drinking water companies and they are very interested, but the more parties that want to participate in development, the better. Are you in?

A contribution to climate resilience

In urban areas, people are working hard to combat the effects of climate change. Drought is an important factor. Especially when you pump up groundwater to irrigate crops and gardens. MOIST will minimize this and make a major contribution to climate resilience.