OHM Advisors’ Team GLASS Wins Internet of H2O Challenge
Tech Competition Seeks Solutions for Lake Erie Water Quality
On October 27, 2017, at the Meeting of the Minds Annual Summit in Sandusky, Ohio, the Cleveland Water Alliance (CWA) and DigitalC announced OHM Advisors and its partners from Team GLASS as the winners of the first Internet of H2O Challenge.
The Internet of H2O Challenge is a competition aimed at solving the challenge of monitoring Lake Erie’s phosphorus levels, which contribute to the overgrowth of harmful algal blooms (HABs) and pose a significant threat to water quality. By bringing next-generation technology to bear, five teams competed for the chance to win up to $50,000 in cash prizes, with judges comprised of industry leaders and government managers.
The three-month competition kicked off in August 2017 on the heels of Erie Hack, which also aimed to tackle Lake Erie’s key challenges with creative technology solutions, many of which focused on HABs.
Team GLASS, which stands for Great Lakes Automated Sampling Solutions, is a collaboration between OHM Advisors, Green Eyes LLC, H2Ometrics, and HESCO. Team members, including Robert Czachorski, Karlin Danielsen, and Nathan Zgnilec from OHM Advisors, offered unique expertise and access to technologies that allowed for advanced nutrient detection, telemetry, cloud data analytics, and system integration. Together, they developed a field-ready system and deployment plan for nutrient monitoring.
The team demonstrated system readiness by performing a pilot deployment at Rock Creek in Tiffin, Ohio with a fully functioning nutrient monitor that transmitted measurements to a cloud data analytics platform. This technology showed a scalable solution deployable at dozens or hundreds of monitoring sights in a relatively short period. To demonstrate this capacity, the team developed a deployment plan for scaling the monitoring system to 100 sites within the Maumee River watershed and its tributaries. This plan for the Maumee Watershed is representative of the scaling that could be reproduced across the Lake Erie Basin.
According to Czachorski, who is a principal at OHM Advisors, "These components have the potential to make Lake Erie the smartest lake in the world and provide a model for other lakes and watersheds to monitor and improve their water quality."
Sounds like a smart solution to us. Congratulations Team GLASS!
More about OHM Advisors' Team GLASS: Robert Czachorski, a partner at OHM and a thought leader in the field of predictive modeling, is the owner and co-founder of H2Ometrics. Karlin Danielsen is a geochemist with a PhD in environmental engineering. Nathan Zgnilec has a background in nutrient pollution. All three are members of the firm’s Environmental and Water Resources Group.
About OHM Advisors:
OHM Advisors is the community advancement firm. Founded in 1962, we deliver award-winning work across the architecture, engineering, and planning spheres. With more than 500 employees in offices throughout Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee, our team partners with leaders at all levels of government, school districts, developers, universities, and private companies to create great places.