60 - EcoHoya Cup

🌟 Inspiration

We were inspired by Georgetown University's amazing sustainability efforts and wanted to create a fun and engaging competition to energize the student body around reducing resource consumption. By combining technology and gamification, we’re uniting the campus community to promote eco-friendly practices and drive positive change! 🌱💡

💡 What It Does

The EcoHoya Cup is a gamified sustainability competition that empowers students to reduce electricity, water, and gas usage across 20 residence halls. Here’s what makes it awesome:

Engages students on campus with a competitive framework that motivates sustainable habits.
Provides a public website where students can track weekly electricity, water, and gas usage for their residence halls, while also viewing trends over time.
Gamifies rankings, with residence halls earning points each week for placing in the top three for each resource category. Rankings are calculated fairly by factoring in building square footage, and cumulative scores are displayed throughout the semester.
Displays the semester winner at the end of the competition, fostering pride and accomplishment.
Allows administrators to upload weekly data via CSV files for seamless updates.
Sends automated email updates to students, keeping them informed and motivated.
Features an AI-powered support system, where students can email ecohoya.cup@gmail.com with questions about competition data or Georgetown’s sustainability efforts and receive near-instant responses.

🔨 How We Built It

To bring the EcoHoya Cup to life, we leveraged cutting-edge technologies:

Vite, React: To build an interactive and visually appealing web app.
Supabase: For robust and scalable data management and authentication.
n8n: To automate workflows, manage AI-generated email responses, and streamline admin tasks.
OpenAI: To power the AI agent that efficiently answers students’ queries.
Bolt.new: To rapidly prototype and kickstart the project, enabling us to develop a fully functional web app in just one weekend!

🚧 Challenges We Faced

Creating the EcoHoya Cup came with a few challenges:

Data Availability: Since there isn’t publicly available resource consumption data, we generated realistic dummy data for the competition.
Fair Scoring: Factoring in the square footage of each residence hall to ensure rankings were calculated equitably.
Complex Data Manipulation: Designing a system to calculate weekly winners for electricity, water, and gas usage required careful planning and innovative solutions.

🏅 Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

We’re thrilled with what we achieved in such a short time:

Building a Complete Web App: Creating a fully functional, polished platform over a single weekend.
Realistic Data Generation: Designing dummy data that reflects real-world usage trends.
Fair Resource Comparisons: Successfully implementing calculations to normalize data based on building size for equitable rankings.

🎓 What We Learned

We discovered how technology can mobilize communities for sustainability efforts:

Engaging Through Communication: Effective communication is key to inspiring students and encouraging participation.
The Potential of Resource Data: Resource consumption data is already recorded, but using it strategically can drive awareness and action.
The Power of Collaboration: Combining technical innovation with a shared commitment to sustainability can create impactful solutions.

🚀 What’s Next for the EcoHoya Cup

We’re excited about the future of the EcoHoya Cup and have big plans for its evolution:

Collaborating with Georgetown: Partnering with the university to integrate real-time resource data for a more accurate and impactful competition.
Expanding to Other Campuses: Scaling the platform so any college or university can engage their students in sustainability initiatives.
Enhancing the AI Agent: Expanding the AI’s knowledge base to include a comprehensive set of information about campus and city-wide sustainability resources and programs.

The EcoHoya Cup is just the beginning. Together, we can empower students to create a greener, more sustainable future! 🚀🌍✨