The Competition – Fall 2022

Competition Overview

The Problem

Stormwater, its impacts, mechanisms, and mitigation strategies are poorly understood by the public. This results in challenges for civil services to justify large capital investments into infrastructure, or programs and policies to protect public property and environmental health. In addition, the public is often ill-equipped to understand the impacts of their own actions on aging infrastructure, are not informed of practices that can protect themselves, and may contribute to the problem through their own actions. Standard public information sessions, pamphlets, online information, and newsletters have not been effective in enlightening the public. This knowledge-gap is seen in all age groups and backgrounds.

The Challenge

From recent trials with elementary school students, hands on experiences were found to be much better at engaging and instilling understanding than traditional outreach methodologies. The challenge then is to create professional, safe, cost-effective, and easily deployable “experiences” that can educate the public on various stormwater topics.

Project Host: City of London

The Corporation of the City of London is the municipal government for London (Canada), located in southwestern Ontario with a population of approximately 383,822. The City is the 11th largest metropolitan area in Canada and is among the fastest growing census metropolitan areas in Canada. Situated on the Thames River and within the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority (UTRCA) area, London experiences frequent flooding due to severe weather events, aging infrastructure, and lots of construction in low-lying areas and floodplains. 

The City was one of the earliest in Ontario to implement a stormwater charge to support the implementation of stormwater infrastructure to protect the City, its residents, and the environment. Today, it continues to make rapid improvements to mitigate the impacts of climate change and the more frequent occurrences of severe storm events.

Additional Resources

Your Innovation

Competing teams will design “experiential” kits (similar to those by https://www.kiwico.com/) that could be manufactured by the City of London, and made available for a target audience.

Ideally, the kits are suitable for a large range of age groups; however, it would be acceptable if it is suitable only for grades 3 to 8. The kits may be deployed by City staff at information workshops for large infrastructure projects to assist with understanding the value of stormwater projects, sent to schools for use in the classroom, or made available for loan in the library for the public. Simple and safe materials, reusability, and intuitive design are paramount. The City of London intends to create working prototypes and short runs using CNC machines, 3D printers, and laser cutters.

For the purpose of the competition, teams do not need to concern themselves with external packaging (e.g. what box everything will come in). If they do design packaging, it can be excluded from overall cost metrics for comparison purposes.

Topic ideas for experiential kits include:

• • How drainage works on different surface types
  • How homes are designed for drainage
  • How soil types impact drainage
  • How engineered river infrastructure works (Ex. The Thames River has dikes and dams)
  • Stormwater pond design features
  • A stormwater pond’s purpose (sediment and erosion control, nutrient removal)
  • The concept of a “subwatershed”
  • How City infrastructure reduces flooding

Report & Pitch Evaluation Criteria

Teams will create a report that describes the innovation, including details about the materials needed, the expense breakdown, and the marketing strategy. An electronic copy of the report must be submitted to submission@rainitinsc.com before 11:59 PM EST on November 13^th, 2022.

Teams will be invited to pitch virtually on November, 30th, 2022. Five minutes will be allotted to each team to pitch their solution. After each pitch, the judges will have the opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback.

The report and solution pitch will be evaluated by a judging panel composed of industry experts. Report and presentation assessment criteria can be found below:

Report Evaluation Criteria

Pitch Evaluation Criteria

Why Participate

Registration

The competition will be hosted virtually and registration is open to students studying at a Canadian college or university.

Teams should consist of three to six members.

As climate change is a multi-sectoral problem, we recommend that participants build diversified teams across various programs to gain different perspectives and skills useful for developing a successful innovation. Students do not need to be attending the same educational institution to be on the same team.

We also strongly encourage student teams to work with mentors from their institution’s internal incubator or accelerator programs.

The deadline to register your team is October 1st at 11:59PM EST.

Click here to register.