Two Systems Engineering graduate students, Anurag Sridharan and Emily Kumpel, were part of a group that shared first place in this year's CITRIS's Big Ideas White Paper competition.
The group's project was NextDrop, which addresses the challenge of unreliable piped water in developing countries. The problem is that when water arrives intermittently and unpredictably, households lose hours waiting by the tap for the water to arrive. NextDrop is a social enterprise that provides households with reliable, near real-time information about water arrival via the mobile phone infrastructure. In addition, NextDrop will generate water delivery data for utilities to improve services and efficiency.
Congratulations, Anu and Emily!