STEM-In-Action Follow Up: Brainiacs with Blue

Last Fall we caught up with one of our STEM-In-Action Teams, Brainiacs with Blue, who were trying to better their community by implementing bioswales. They took their STEM-In-Action grant money, crafted a plan and were heading out to make it happen last time we caught up. So now, we’re catching up to see their progress the year has given them.

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We are team Brainiacs with Blue, a neighborhood-based team from Portland, Oregon comprising of 8th graders, Sankalp, Anish, Shrika, and Anvitha, attending Stoller Middle School. Our solution endeavors to make maintenance of bioswales easier by using sensors to detect and proactively alert the local water agencies when there is a problem so a technician can visit the bioswale only when a bioswale needs attention. The resultant time and cost efficiencies could be used for enabling additional bioswales.

Figure 1: Brainiacs with a model bioswale

Bioswales are roadside water filters that leverage layers of materials like plants, gravel, and mulch to filter out chemicals and pollutants from rainwater as it flows to a nearby stream or drain and thereby enables reduction of load on expensive wastewater treatment facilities. While bioswales can last for around 20-50 years with good maintenance, any issues requiring attention are currently detected during periodic manual visits.

Figure 2: What a typical Bioswale is made of?

 Source: lmgfl.com

Figure 3: Brainiacs visit to a local bioswale under construction

Thanks to the eCYBERMISSION STEM-in-Action Grant, we have been making steady progress on enhancing our solution which includes two primary parts - a set of sensors to collect data from the bioswale and a mobile app to analyze data from the bioswales and provide alerts to local water management agencies. For the mobile app portion, we have developed the front end user interface using Android Studio and are storing the collected data on Amazon DynamoDB. We are thankful to a software developer from Nike who has guided us on working with various cloud based databases and helped us converge to using Amazon DynamoDB for our use case. We are currently working on testing the collection of data from the sensors and subsequently creating dashboards highlighting key issues with a particular bioswale.

Figure 4: Brainiacs with Clean Water Services personnel

We have also been working on enhancing our sensor based prototype model. Health of plants providing the primary water filtering capability in the bioswale is critical. As such, we have integrated a wireless soil moisture sensor that would allow us to monitor if a bioswale is getting dry and alert the local water management agency to address. We have also incorporated a water flow meter to measure the flow of water at the outgoing pipe in the bioswale with an idea to detect clogging when water flow falls belows normal. Having said that, we have been performing our testing under simulated conditions. Our continued engagement with a stormwater expert from Boston has enabled us to understand the design process and the testing required to integrate any solution into a real bioswale. We have discovered that the water pipes in a real bioswale are much larger than the size we have been testing with in our prototype. We are working on seeking guidance from Clean Water Services, the local water management agency, to understand if we are able to adapt our prototype for a real world bioswale.

One of our teammates participated in the EngineerGirl competition and wrote an essay about our topic and solution and won 1st place^[1]. She also gave an online interview about the project that was published in DJC Oregon ^[3].

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Proud of the results made by Team Brainiacs with Blue and amazed to see what passion for helping your community and perseverance towards reaching a solution can do. Excited to see where their ideas take them from here.

-Mission Control

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