Tag Archives: Challenging Nutrients Coalition

Visualizing Our Waters

By Dustin Renwick

“Data mining” conjures images of someone clanking away with a pick-axe at a mountain of 1s and 0s. But the sentiment isn’t far off. Heaps of data are useless without understanding the relevance and context within the larger picture.

Graphic showing swirling water with words "Visualizing Nutrients" belowNutrient pollution is one the most expensive problems associated with aquatic environments. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus in water affects human health and the sustainability of ecosystems. Green water means increased risks for harmful algal blooms, hypoxia, and other nutrient-related water quality issues.

To help provide a clearer picture of this problem, 29 teams are now developing and testing affordable, real-time technologies for measuring nitrogen and phosphorus in water as part of our Nutrient Sensor Challenge. Yet those sensors will produce more data, ever increasing our need to make the numbers understandable to a larger audience beyond the scientists who study the measurements.

Today, with the U.S. Geological Survey and Blue Legacy International (a nonprofit focused on water), EPA launched Visualizing Nutrients. This innovation competition includes $15,000 in cash prizes.

We want talented designers, coders, data scientists, sensor experts, and anyone interested in complex problems to analyze and organize existing nitrogen and phosphorus water pollution data.

The best submissions will transform publicly available, open government data sets into dynamic visual representations that reveal insights, trends, and relationships. First Place will take home $10,000 and a People’s Choice Award will win $5,000.

Visit the competition website to submit a solution. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. on June 8, 2015.

This is one of many efforts by the broader Challenging Nutrients Coalition to bring innovative ideas and solutions to bear on the problem of nutrient pollution. The group consists of federal agencies, universities, and nonprofits.

About the Author: Dustin Renwick works in conjunction with the Innovation Team in EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

Editor's Note: The views expressed here are intended to explain EPA policy. They do not change anyone's rights or obligations. You may share this post. However, please do not change the title or the content, or remove EPA’s identity as the author. If you do make substantive changes, please do not attribute the edited title or content to EPA or the author.

EPA's official web site is www.epa.gov. Some links on this page may redirect users from the EPA website to specific content on a non-EPA, third-party site. In doing so, EPA is directing you only to the specific content referenced at the time of publication, not to any other content that may appear on the same webpage or elsewhere on the third-party site, or be added at a later date.

EPA is providing this link for informational purposes only. EPA cannot attest to the accuracy of non-EPA information provided by any third-party sites or any other linked site. EPA does not endorse any non-government websites, companies, internet applications or any policies or information expressed therein.