Hydros · OneAquaHealth IEEE Global Hackathon 2026
Don't guess the water, investigate it.
Hydros turns a photograph of an urban waterway and its location into a structured, evidence-first investigation. It shows what is observed, what public records document, and what can only be inferred.
It does not test water. It cannot measure bacteria, chemicals, or potability — and it says so plainly.
- Track 2 · Data-to-Insight
- Track 3 · AI-Supported Assessment
- Track 6 · Resilience Informatics
- Track 7 · Digital Health Standards
The method
Three layers, never merged
Most tools collapse guesswork into a single verdict. Hydros keeps the layers apart so you can judge the reasoning yourself.
Observation
“The water appears brown and cloudy.”
What can actually be seen in the photograph. Never a claim about safety.
Evidence
“A government report documented pollution concerns in this watershed.”
What a retrieved external source states, with its URL preserved.
Inference
“These findings raise concern but do not prove contamination at your exact location.”
What can reasonably be concluded from observations and evidence together — and only here.
Worked examples
Start where the research cities are
One click opens a completed, seeded investigation. Before the demo data lands, each card starts a prefilled investigation instead.
Coimbra
Mondego River
40.2033, -8.4103
Mondego River — Portugal The project coordinator sits at the University of Coimbra — this is our flagship demo.
Investigate this waterway →
Ghent
Lys River
51.0543, 3.7216
Lys River — Belgium Canals and the Lys–Scheldt confluence in a dense historic core.
Investigate this waterway →
Oslo
Akerselva River
59.9235, 10.7522
Akerselva River — Norway Akerselva runs from the forests through industrial heritage to the fjord.
Investigate this waterway →
The pipeline
Four stages, streamed live
No fake progress bars — each stage appears as the server runs it.
- 01
Visual analysis
A vision model reports only what is visible: colour, clarity, turbidity, particles, foam, algae, debris.
- 02
Geographic context
OpenStreetMap data locates nearby waterways, industry, agriculture, landfills and treatment facilities.
- 03
Web research
A research model plans queries, then reads real search results and keeps every source URL.
- 04
Reasoning
A final model synthesises a structured assessment, with confidence and stated limitations.
One Health
Water connects every health
The One Health model holds that ecosystem health, animal health, and human health are one linked chain. A degraded urban waterway is never only an environmental story: it is habitat loss, wildlife exposure, and — through recreation, irrigation, livestock watering, or the food chain — a human story too.
Hydros surfaces that chain explicitly. Each investigation maps its evidence onto human, animal, and ecosystem exposure pathways, stated conditionally and cited to their sources — so a city, a researcher, or a neighbour can see how a waterway touches health, not just that it might.
Honest limitations
Hydros is not a laboratory.
It cannot measure bacteria, chemicals, heavy metals, or potability. When the evidence does not support a stronger conclusion, the correct result is INSUFFICIENT_DATA — a first-class outcome, not a failure. Absence of evidence is never presented as evidence of safety.
Every claim keeps its source
Assessments link back to the pages they came from, so you can verify the evidence rather than trust the model.