Given the scenario of living in a world where major flood events happen on an even more frequent basis, because of climate change, the questions facing us about what we can invent, create or adapt towards meeting that challenge are huge.

This was the way that Josie Ogden Schroeder, YMCA Christchurch CEO, framed the inaugural GRAPPLE event held at the YMCA’s 4C Technology Centre’s makerspace between 3-14 October – thanks to supporting sponsorship from the Urban Design Forum, Ministry of Education, University of Canterbury and marquee sponsor Architectus.

Josie is enthused by the potential for sparking ideas about future GRAPPLE challenges that are directed to other impacts on our changing urban forms and environments, and the potential for scaling those ideas up. The kinds of topics and issues that are sure to surface at UrbanismNZ in April 2023. [You can see Josie speaking about the GRAPPLE event until this Friday 28 October on TVNZ On Demand, 34 minutes in at One News at 6pm] .

A successful event

Over the two school holiday weeks, two cohorts of Year 12-13 students shaped their ideas for the challenges posed by flooding events into functional prototypes, presenting them on successive Fridays to a judging panel that included UDF committee member Ekin Sakin along with Matt Eglen (Architectus), Ben Westeneng (Beca), Euving Au (Ruamoko Solutions), Te Matarau chair Elle Archer and youth judges Jadah Coffin, Pan Wattanapradit and Pinto Wattanapradit.

Ekin Sakin: “It was so impressive to see how much this overall group of 40 young people achieved in 4.5 days to further existing thinking. As judges we felt the future is in safe hands with such hard working and collaborative young people”.

More on the judging results and descriptions of team efforts are available to read at the bottom of this blog post.

UDF committee member Ekin Sakin on the GRAPPLE judging panel, next to Clark Williams and fellow judges.

Clark Williams is the 4C curator (the C’s stand for Curiosity | Communication | Creativity | Critical Thinking), and was equally impressed with the high standard of outcomes.

“The cool thing about having industry involved in mentoring and judging is you get some really honest, real-world responses. What we saw ranged from a really good understanding of things like hydro power generation, to designs that had legitimate intellectual property opportunities.

“There was an emphasis on making prototypes that actually function not just pie in the sky ideas. That’s what I really love because there is critical thinking in design, but also serious problem-solving and persistence in making something actually function.

“The real learning comes at 3am when you are deep into trial-and-error and combing the internet for answers to your questions. That kind of problem-solving experience sticks for the rest of your life.

Clark says that Josie and he knew that the environment they could provide for such an event would work, adding “we toyed with a few options on how to create a program of learning but ultimately landed on the obvious choice of just pitching a challenge and letting the young people take it from there”.

“I love project-based learning and opportunities to let young people really sink their teeth into something properly. Sadly that’s something that they often miss out on at schools. As an educator It’s a super satisfying way to work – not knowing what the outcome might be, but empowering the young people to get something done of a high standard regardless.

“GRAPPLE showed a really high calibre of builds and design, but there is something to be said beyond that about the success of bonding for these young people. I did connect all the participants online first which meant we got to know each other for a month or two before gathering in Christchurch and grouping into 11 teams.

“Getting kids from all around the country together was a highpoint. They got along really well. Even though it was a competition I also saw groups helping other groups to ensure their design could function as intended.

Clark is confident another GRAPPLE event will take place in 2023. “Events like this need time to develop a name and reputation and I’m sure the lure to take part will grow, and, strengthened by word-of-mouth, will be even greater next year”.

UDF featured updates about GRAPPLE on our social media channels as it was happening and encourage members to spread the word! As Josie Ogden Schroeder said on One News on TVNZ on 24 October:

“Our society needs all hands on deck as our climate continues to change”.

RESULTS FROM GRAPPLE 2023

The two teams that won prizes of $1500 each were:

Watt-er
A Christchurch and Whitianga trio designed and made a prototype for a system that would generate energy from increased rainwater. They specifically designed their system to work with existing standard pipes found in most residential housing. They shared their iterations successfully and were still thinking of improvements when presenting to the judges. Watt-er was one of two winning teams due to how much they were able to improve their prototype, the depth of their research and their ability to go beyond flood response and into the realm of resilience with potential for distributed power generation.

Serial Solutions/ Serial Port Killers
A team of 5 young people from Palmerston North and Auckland. This team designed and built a drone aimed at assisting those people who might experience flooding that causes water rises up to waist-deep. They developed edge detection to detect people, topography and animals under associated levels of water, an incident mapping system to help with prioritisation and talked to the community to establish what items would need to be dropped off in a flood event. The drone would both detect and communicate the status of flooded zones and drop off supplies. The comprehensiveness of the skills that went into this problem-solving solution, above and beyond the technical challenge of making a drone, earnt this team top place in the first week of GRAPPLE.

Other team responses were:

Grapple Pie
A team of 4 young people from four cities: Auckland, Dunedin, Rangiora, Nelson. This team made a river monitor prototype (flow, depth etc) as a warning device. Their aim was to simplify existing monitors and their use, and to make them robust, reliable and cheap. The simpler warning devices they presented didn’t require people to have phones or access to the internet.

Project Tangaroa
An Auckland trio who designed and made a prototype for a water monitor for real -time flood level monitoring, an improvement to the currently available two hourly updates. They described it as a “smoke alarm for the river”.

Re-water
A team of 5 young people from Dunedin, Hamilton and Rangiora. This team made a de-salination chamber working model. Their aim was to ensure there was access to drinkable water in a flood event where water is contaminated by salt water.

Retro-hydrogate
A Hamilton duo, designed and made a prototype for a modular reservoir system to be installed below footpaths and provide additional stormwater capacity in urban areas. With additional sensors they could also provide information about water level and quality.

Rush Hour
An Auckland quintet, designed and made a prototype for a flood monitor designed specifically for rural areas. Their focus was to provide prediction based on past and continually updated data, in order to give farmers as much notice as possible in case of a flood so they can attend to responses, such as moving their stock to higher ground.

Smart Rock
A Taranaki duo designed and made a prototype for a water monitor in the shape of a small rock which would blend in to its environment and provide water contamination data (among other information) to help with prioritisation of efforts to worst affected areas in cases of flooding.

The Rectifiers
A team of 3 young people from Invercargill. This team made a debris cleaning device aimed at small scale debris which creates the largest issue (due to blocked drains etc) and that constitutes one of largest activities for clean-up efforts after a flooding event.

Trust Us, We’re Engineers
A Hamilton duo designed and made a prototype for a twin boom unstaffed plane with multiple sensors to collect and transmit data. This would provide information at a lower cost than currently done with staffed planes at the time of flooding.

Verti-gro
A team of two from Auckland. This team worked on improving existing and emerging vertical farming practices and came up with a modular design for more stackable and moveable models. Their aim was to reduce waste and gain land efficiency.