Sanitation Hackathon: Fast and Comsats teams win contracts

Students will work with World Bank to develop tech solutions to sanitation issues.

LAHORE: Five students from the FAST National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences were awarded the top prize at the Sanitation Hackathon on Sunday for developing software to tackle the problem of tanker drivers overcharging for the delivery of water to Hayatabad residents in Peshawar.

Teams from COMSATS Lahore and Beaconhouse National University were second and third at the event, which featured 30 teams from colleges across the country and their websites or mobile phone apps designed to tackle a water or sanitation issue.

The two top placed teams will work with the World Bank over the next six months to change their projects into reality.

Junaid Gill, the FAST team leader, said that his team had an edge over the others as they had developed a system that enabled consumers of tanker water in Peshawar to complain in multiple ways, like dialling a number, sending an SMS, or sending a multimedia SMS with an image as proof. The complaints and the response of the authority concerned could also be tracked via the Internet or mobile phone. “The judges liked it as it could also be used by people who have phones but no access to the Internet,” Gill said.

The Sanitation Hackathon was organised by the Punjab IT board, the Urban Unit of the Planning and Development Department, and the Water and Sanitation Programme of the World Bank.

Thirty teams of a total 130 students from various colleges were given statements eight days ago of 13 sanitation and water problems afflicting Pakistan. Their job was to come up with technological solutions to the problems. The teams were put up in a Model Town house provided by the Punjab IT Board for the last two days to develop mobile applications or websites.

They worked through the weekend to present their ideas on Sunday. Each presentation was followed by remarks and questions from the judges and other participants.

The judging panel consisted of Masroor Ahmad, a water expert with the World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme; Fasih Mehta, senior project manager for the Punjab IT Board; and Dr Basit Shafiq, a professor at the computer sciences department at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2012.