Inspiration
After seeing many philanthropic projects to bring water wells to Africa, such as Mr. Beast's Team Water, we realized that many of these projects do not provide adequate infrastructure to maintain these wells. We decided to provide a solution to give people the ability to maintain these wells for decades to come.
What it does
We built a system where users of wells can easily report issues with the well using a QR code posted on each well. When a well gets reported, the database gets updated with the information, and allows state sponsored maintenance to repair these wells. Additionally, we created a map that allows the users of these wells to find alternative sources of water when their primary well breaks.
How we built it
We used PostgreSQL, React, flask, Twilio, leaflet.js, PostGIS. PostgreSQL was our database system of choice as it works well with PostGIS, which we used to store the polygons on the map. We used leaflet.js for the map itself, React for the frontend, and flask for the backend. Finally, Twilio was used to allow for SMS interaction.
Challenges we ran into
Making the map was the main challenge, as we initially had the idea to use a pathfinding algorithm but realized that there was more complexity to the problem. We had to consider both the well capacity as well as the amount of people that use it, and we ended up deciding to use a weighted Voronoi diagram allowing residents to find an alternative well without the risk of overcrowding an existing well. We also realized that internet access may not be available on site, so we made an alternative using SMS messaging to report issues.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re most proud of creating a functional and visually compelling map visualization system that dynamically represents each well’s service area. Implementing the weighted Voronoi algorithm to balance well capacity and user distribution was a major technical milestone, allowing us to prevent overcrowding while ensuring water accessibility.
What we learned
We learned how to integrate multiple technologies across different layers of a full-stack project, from geospatial data management with PostGIS to building dynamic, interactive maps with Leaflet and React. Most importantly, we learned how complex resource management problems like well maintenance require not just technical solutions, but also thoughtful design that accounts for geography, human behavior, and long-term sustainability.
What's next for Project Oasis
The next steps for Project Oasis is for us to refine the algorithms to be dynamic to daily uses of each well using statistics. Additionally, we can improve on the offline functionality, as even SMS may not be available.
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