The Urban Water Challenge is a global competition for water entrepreneurs who are ready to pilot and scale their solutions in cities.
Finalists receive a combination of financial awards, pilot focused curriculum and mentorship, showcase opportunities, and introductions to potential partners and investors. With this support and industry-wide validation, startups gain new opportunities for tech adoption, scaling, and follow-on funding.
The Challenge gives new urban water tech a powerful opportunity to shine on a global stage—and provides communities with a steady flow of tested solutions that can make their cities’ water systems more efficient, equitable, healthy, and resilient.
Since our launch in 2018, our program has helped 27 water startups complete 35 pilots in 17 countries. We also provide travel and pitch opportunities at global events, dedicated marketing campaigns, and mentor and investor relationships.
Solution
ACWA Robotics provides the only smart and autonomous robot that can bring utilities the data they need to make accurate decisions on when and where to replace their water mains and save millions of their budget each year.
Why this matters
Water utilities are losing millions of dollars each year because they don’t have the information they need to make efficient decisions regarding network maintenance. Up to 40% of pipe replacements are either inefficient or improperly prioritized. In addition, 20 to 40% of water running in distribution networks lost every year due to pipe conditions, costing the city money and wasting dwindling supplies of potable water.
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Urban Water Challenge
Solution
Daupler RMS uses multi-modal artificial intelligence and automation to route incidents to the right people, regardless of their organization, saving vital time and resources while keeping customers informed.
Why this matters
Incidents, such as main breaks or sewer overflows, often get reported to the wrong department or service provider when near service boundaries – causing delays in response that can lead to unnecessary property damage, environmental impact, or customer dissatisfaction.
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Urban Water Challenge
Solution
Ocean Oasis provides desalinated water to shore with zero emissions and minimal local environmental impact by using wave energy to desalinate seawater in offshore floating buoys.
Why this matters
With population growth and climate change, water scarcity will affect over half the world’s population by 2050. It is not possible to cover the global demand for fresh water without extensive desalination, particularly in arid or remote regions. Offshore floating buoy’s compact footprint helps secure equitable and affordable access to freshwater to all in an environmentally friendly way.
Other Imagine H2O programs
Imagine H2O Accelerator 2023
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Imagine H2O Accelerator, Urban Water Challenge
Solution
Powwater provides businesses and consumers with data that ensures that high quality and safe water is efficiently made available to them at affordable prices.
Why this matters
In most emerging market cities globally, water is of unknown quality, and it is delivered inefficiently and unpredictably through a private network because pipes are either broken or nonexistent. These inefficiencies result in lots of wasted time, water downtime for clients as well as fuel wastage for water delivery companies. Fragmented private vendors don’t have the tools necessary to offer a more streamlined, high quality, and efficient service.
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Urban Water Challenge
Solution
Decentralized wastewater treatment technology that eliminates sewer overflows and basement backups during large storm events. The solution rapidly removes pollutants and disinfects harmful pathogens 16x faster than conventional systems, and its onsite treatment capabilities result in high cost savings for municipalities.
Why this matters
Large volume rain events, which are occurring with more frequency and intensity, frequently overburden aging municipal infrastructure, forcing utility leaders to decide between overflowing untreated sewage into waterways or backing up residential and commercial basements with contaminated water.
Previous programs
Imagine H2O Accelerator 2021
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Imagine H2O Accelerator, Urban Water Challenge
Solution
Aclarity commercializes novel electrochemical water treatment systems for the complete, on-site destruction of contaminants like PFAS in wastewater.
Why this matters
PFAS, a group of manufacturing chemicals that is known to be harmful to the environment and human health, commonly enters the environment from wastewater discharge and landfill leachate. Alacrity’s system treats the water that drains from landfills and destroys the PFAS before it can enter the environment and cause harm.
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Urban Water Challenge
Solution
BlueConduit platform provides clarity, recommended order for lead service line replacements, and easy-to-understand dashboards for internal and public consumption, empowering utilities and individuals with information to reduce their exposure to lead.
Why this matters
Lead pipes were the building blocks of the modern day water distribution system. However, now lead exposure has been linked to detrimental health effects on humans including children’s development. BlueConduit’s software optimizes the lead service line replacement process through accurately predicting lead conveyance pipes locations that cities can use in decision making.
IV
Urban Water Challenge
Solution
Instead of flushing waste, CHANGE: WATER Labs is solving the problem of off-line sanitation with a toilet that evaporates it. Instead of using and polluting water to get rid of waste, their iThrone solution turns waste back into pure water.
Why this matters
Millions of people across the developing world live beyond the pipe – without access to basic drinking water and sanitation services. This is because new centralized drinking water and sewage systems are unsustainable, infeasible and costly to build. change:WATER Labs provides a decentralized sanitation solution that hygienically contains waste to reduce disease and prevent sewage runoff into nearby water bodies.
Previous programs
Imagine H2O Accelerator 2018
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Urban Water Challenge
Solution
DigitalPaani is a lifecycle management system that leverages proprietary software, live data, and automation to optimize every aspect of plant operations, be it diagnosing problems early, managing the workflows of every individual involved in operations as per actual plant design, guiding real-time process troubleshooting, and recommending retrofits when needed.
Why this matters
While cities in India are focused on installing more water distribution and treatment plants, they lack operational efficiency tools, leading to the inability to handle complex operations and prevent the discharge of untreated effluent into surrounding water. DigitalPaani’s IoT system improves plant management through not only identifying problems, but also by recommending changes in operating parameters, training and guiding every task executed by the operations team.
Previous programs
Imagine H2O Asia 3
IV
Urban Water Challenge
Solution
Gross-Wen Technologie’s (GWT) patented revolving algae biofilm (RAB) system cost effectively and sustainably uses algae-based treatment to remove nutrients, capture carbon dioxide and produce a sellable algae byproduct.
Why this matters
Anaerobic digesters break down solid waste during the wastewater treatment process. When treating the solid waste digestate, these systems release biogas which is high in GHG’s like carbon dioxide and methane. However, GWT’s cost-effective system reduces the amount of carbon in biogas released, making their technology much more sustainable than alternative solutions.
Previous programs
Imagine H2O Accelerator 2021
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Imagine H2O Accelerator, Urban Water Challenge
Solution
SewerAI leverages its cloud inspection management platform (Pioneer™) and AI Computer Vision tools (AutoCode™) to help wastewater professionals to accelerate productivity, increase condition assessment accuracy, and reduce the overall cost to maintain and renew aging collection systems.
Why this matters
Limited insight into the conditions of sewer pipes combined with aging and overworked infrastructure increasingly leads to unexpected sewer collapses and overflow events that affect residential neighborhoods and marine life alike. SewerAI’s software enables municipalities to assess the condition of buried wastewater assets, predict likely failures, and optimally prioritize the rehabilitation or replacement of their assets.
Previous programs
Imagine H2O Accelerator 2020
IV
Urban Water Challenge
Problem:
Cities don’t have the tools to measure flood risk and build resilience resulting in extensive damage to communities, economies and local environments.
Solution:
High resolution satellite imagery and machine learning technology. Cloud to Street is leveraging their technology to develop the first of its kind parametric insurance for coastal flood resilience and protection.
Pilot:
Cloud to Street is launching the first commercially scalable parametric flood insurance pilot to help the city of New Orleans better understand their flood risk and build urban coastal resilience
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Imagine H2O Accelerator, Urban Water Challenge
Problem:
Cities’ costs for treating and conveying water are increasing, in no small part due to rising electricity costs.
Solution:
Modular hydropower turbines installed directly within existing infrastructure that generates continuous, reliable hydroelectric power
Pilot:
Emrgy is installing its hydropower turbines in Phoenix, AZ to reduce operating costs, grid electricity consumption, and carbon footprint
III
Urban Water Challenge
Problem:
Cities are struggling to respond to rapid urbanization and the demand it puts on local water and aging wastewater treatment facilities.
Solution:
Onsite decentralized wastewater treatment that converts wastewater into high quality soil amendments and purified water that can be reused onsite for non-potable applications
Pilot:
Epic CleanTech is installing it’s system in a high-rise building in the bay area to decrease building water demand by 90% and ease the load on municipal utilities.
III
Imagine H2O Accelerator, Urban Water Challenge
Problem:
Cities need to build resilience to flooding and persistent water shortages. Due to climate change, aging infrastructure and strict regulation, public and private developers are being forced to implement climate adaptation measures in urban development and retrofitting projects.
Solution:
Bluebloqs is a compact, circular system for rainwater treatment, storage and reuse in urban areas that captures 95% rainwater.
Pilot:
Field Factors will deploy its Bluebloq system and monitoring platform to promote climate resilience and green infrastructure in the Hague, Netherlands.
III
Urban Water Challenge
Problem:
Cities in developing countries have minimal information about the health of wastewater infrastructure.
Solution:
AI-based wastewater surveillance robots for monitoring the health of wastewater infrastructure, helping cities intercept, divert and treat raw sewage, significantly reducing water pollution.
Deployment:
Fluid Robotics will use it’s robots to help the city of Pune, India divert and treat raw sewage from the Mula-mutha river.
III
Imagine H2O Asia, Urban Water Challenge
Problem:
Cities in emerging markets lack the technical capacity and resources to effectively provide city-wide, inclusive wastewater treatment and scale their services
Solution:
Non-sewered sanitation through a “waste-to-energy” model which is more cost-effective and environmentally friendly than sewerage.
Pilot:
Sanivation will carry out a feasibility study to deploy a circular economy treatment plant for the residents of Malindi, Kenya.
III
Urban Water Challenge
Problem:
Cities do not have real-time insight into water and wastewater quality which leaves them vulnerable to toxic shocks or heavy loads from industrial sources.
Solution:
Sensor platform that delivers continuous data to enable analysis and optimization of water and wastewater quality in real-time.
Pilot:
SENTRY will help São Paulo, Brazil’s wastewater treatment plants optimize processes and ensure only treated water flows back into the ecosystem
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Imagine H2O Accelerator, Imagine H2O Asia, Urban Water Challenge
Problem:
Small and Medium-sized water utilities lack visibility on the state of water quality beyond the plant and experience water quality issues.
Solution:
Affordable sensors and an intuitive dashboard that report unsafe changes in chlorine levels and turbidity, acting as an early warning for operators.
Pilot:
Varuna will deploy it’s solution to increase visibility and efficiency for the water utility and provides assurance to communities about the safety of their water in Trenton, NJ and/or Monroe, LA
III
Imagine H2O Accelerator, Urban Water Challenge
Solution:
Modular, decentralized wastewater treatment systems
Pilot:
Indra is partnering with two academic institutions in India to install individual wastewater systems
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Imagine H2O Asia, Urban Water Challenge
Solution:
Smart water meters and automated leakage prevention system for high rise apartments
Pilot:
SmarterHomes has partnered with Namibia Water Corporation Ltd. to deploy 3,000 battery powered smart water meters with integrated leakage prevention systems to reduce household consumption by 35%
II
Urban Water Challenge
Solution:
Cloud connected sensor network for stormwater management – the google traffic maps for sewers
Pilot:
StormSensor is partnering with the Jersey City Municipal Utility to Authority and the Jersey City Office of Innovation to deploy a network of 36 individual IoT connected sensors to monitor stormwater and combined sewer flow
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Imagine H2O Accelerator, Urban Water Challenge
Solution:
Water management platform integrating low cost measuring devices with Narrow-Band IoT
Pilot:
Upepo is partnering with Safaricom and local utilities to install 5,000 meters.
II
Urban Water Challenge
Solution:
Trenchless technology for the installation of pipeline infrastructure
Pilot:
Zilper has partnered with Aqua Ingenieros SAS (Cota, Columbia) to deploy its first commercial prototype trenchless equipment and guidance system for 400 meters of pipeline
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Imagine H2O Accelerator, Urban Water Challenge
Solution:
Turnkey water ATMs for arsenic and fluoride-affected communities with patented filtration technology, IOT enabled operations and pay-as-you-go cards
Pilot:
Drinkwell deployed four systems in Chittagong. In parallel, we introduced Drinkwell to the World Bank who recently announced a $100m loan facility for Bangladesh municipalities. After its successful pilot, Drink is working with the Chittagong utility and the World Bank to finance and implement a network of 200 ATM systems, reaching more than 300k people in urban areas
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Imagine H2O Asia, Urban Water Challenge
Solution:
Artificial intelligence water platform that equips India’s second-tier cities with digital tools to reduce service failures and boost infrastructure upgrades
Pilot:
Smartterra partnered with the Warangal Municipal Administration, Telangana state to manage the full cycle of water distribution and drainage.
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Urban Water Challenge, Imagine H2O Asia
Solution:
On-demand, in-home testing device for high-accuracy lead testing in real-time to empower utilities to take action
Pilot:
Spout partnered with Denver Water to empower 500 consumers with tap water quality knowledge and help Denver build the necessary response systems to take action
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Urban Water Challenge
Urban Water Challenge III
Stormwater & Flood Control
After winning the Urban Water Challenge, Field Factors received extensive local press coverage that led to several sales leads. The company has now developed, installed, and tested two of their three systems. They’re already in the final stages of discussion in order to expand their partnership with Dunea Water Utility into The Hague and Hitteplein.
Field Factors is gearing up for its first fundraise; they’ve already met one investor at Imagine H2O’s Water Innovation Week. Imagine H2O and Field Factors are co-creating a showcase video to solicit sales and investment leads.
Allegra Gordon
Oceankind
Anders Jacobson
Blue Foundry
Betsy Otto
Independent
Caroline Delaire
Aquaya Institute
Chaarvi Amit Badani
American Family Insurance Institute
Chloe Oliver Viola
World Bank
Erika Montague
Schmidt Marine Technologies
Jason Thompson
Oceankind
Jennifer Sara
World Bank
Jiten Manglani
Aqualateral
Katie Velasco
Rare, Center for Behavior and the Environment
Kunal Shah
Anaergia
Margaret Bowman
Independent
Michelle Carnavale
11th Hour Racing
Neil Jeffery
Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor
Paul Gagliardo
Independent
Stephanie Wear
The Nature Conservancy
Timothy Male
Environmental Policy Innovation Center
Tom Ferguson
Burnt Island Ventures
Will Sarni
Water Foundry
Xin Gao
Independent
Imagine H2O Accelerator 2015, Urban Water Challenge I
Drinking Water
Drinkwell participated in Imagine H2O’s 2015 Accelerator shortly after the company’s launch. Through the program, they met key stakeholders and figured out how to market their technology to their target customers. Once their solution was proven, they were selected for the 2018 Urban Water Challenge to deploy it in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Drinkwell scaled the initial four-system, UWC-funded pilot after Chittagong committed to 200+ more systems (reaching more than 300K customers) with support from the World Bank.
Our programs support entrepreneurs at different stages and geographic regions. See which one is the best for you.
The Imagine H2O Accelerator equips early-stage water entrepreneurs with the resources they need to develop their solutions, commercialize their technologies, and enter new markets.
Imagine H2O Asia unlocks access to water innovation across the region, connecting startups to new markets, partners, and pilot support from our Singapore hub.
The Urban Water Challenge provides comprehensive support for entrepreneurs who are ready to launch and scale solutions that will transform the future of water in coastal cities.
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