Who?

We are a team of 13 students for several different areas of science, raging from environmental engineering to mathematics and business administration. Böle is a word in cabecar, a native american culture that resides on Costa Rican highlands. It means water spring.

Why?

Clean drinking water is humankind's most valuable good.

Right now, around 71% of the Earth's surface is covered with water. Only 2.5% of that is fresh water. And 0,62% of that is potentially consumable.

This means that of all the water that is exposed on Earth’s surface, only 0,44% is potentially consumable, and that tiny portion is exposed to pollution clusters that jeopardize the integrity of those water sources. Form poor or nonexistent sewage treatment to lackluster urban planning, the consumption of clean water is not guaranteed for the vast majority of world population. Only 16% of the world's nations fulfill basic sanitation requirements for their population, and 3,2 million deaths can be attributed to unsanitary water consumption every year. This is even without considering the impact of this same issue in other species and whole ecosystems.

But this is beyond a health issue: water domain empowers people and empowers communities. Water is not just a basic need, it is also a political and economical tool, and the bigger the segment of the population that has knowledge and control over water, the more equal our societies will be.

What?

Because clean water consumption is everybody's issue, we are intending to involve everyone in the solution. Böle is developing a way to build a clean water database through crowd testing water sources. Any water source could be tested: sources that are already being used, sources that are no longer used or even sources that could be used in the future. This database should accessible in real time, >ready to anyone around the globe.

How?

We want to diagnose the quality of water through a portable device that is able to take both chemical, biological and physical measurments form a couple drops of water.

The chemical measurements are taken using a special piece of paper. It has a grid of different reagents that change color according to the substances the water sample contains. Along with analyzing the paper, the device takes physical measurements like turbidity and temperature, and our app processes the data and creates a report of the quality of that sample.

The data is uploaded to our servers where it is analyzed and cross-examined with geographical and demographical data of that area, generating reports on real time, ready to share across the globe.

Accurate and timely information is humankind's second most valuable good.

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