So, as you might already know, we are brewing beer. What you might not know is that we are brewing a beer with De Prael, a brewery in Amsterdam. Last Friday, we dragged 1000 liters of rainwater from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences to the brewery in the red light district. Luckily we had some help from our fellow medialab interns Freddy and Vibhor from the KLM team.
Trying to cross the wibautstraat in time.
For everybody who’s interested, we wrote a research paper about the influence of gamification on awareness about natural hazards.
The research paper is still in its concept phase, so it will be improved during the next sprint.
For everybody who is interested you can read it here .
During last 3 weeks, we have been analysing our route and what we want to deliver in June to our partner Amsterdam Rainproof. First of all, we decided that this project will be focused just on one product: a game!
Our programmer and designer are doing a great job developing this product, that will contain a quiz about climate change, Amsterdam Rainproof and different kind of rainproofing measures. In this way, the players will have a good time learning how to protect their houses. At the same time, there are DIY cards for rainproofing your house, that can also offer services and could function like vouchers for discounts on rainproofing measures.
This is how our game is going to look like
Therefore, if you are a small (or a big) company and want to reach new customers, and help people who want to be more rainproof, just let us know and we will contact you to explain how!
As you can see, there are many ways of making this possible for all of us, even you are a private, small shop or a big company. Thus, we will upload more news in the following weeks, because our last sprint will be focused on testing the game at Fab City and closing the deals we need to make in order to make our product viable.
Join us next Friday at Amsterdam Rainproof container at Fab City and try our game!
So, three more weeks have passed, but what is up with the rainproof beer? We have done quite a lot for the beer.
In the first week, we started brewing a new beer, a weizenbier, we were brewing it in the HvA studio, so we got some attention. The minor entrepeneurship noticed us and wrote an article in their startup magazine about us.
The second batch was yeasting in our locker for two weeks, and is now ready to be bottled!
Team Rainproof brewing in the MediaLAB kitchen
Letting the yeast do its job!
The day after the brewing, we were invited to join the knowledge mile dinner at The Pool, where we were invited to speak on the stage about our project and the beer. The Knowledge mile is an initiative of several public and private parties to make the wibautstraat and weesperstraat the most innovative and smartest street in Amsterdam. The knowledge mile also wants to be green, therefore they invited us to tell something.
In the same week, we also got in contact with a local brewery, who were interested in testing brewing with larger quantities of rainwater. We only need a place to catch the rainwater. This place will be the volkshotel, where we will install a simple installation that catches the rainwater that falls on the flat roof.
Alright, so the only thing is, is rainwater safe for consumption? We tested the pH in HvA’s chemistry lab, which was 7, that means that it is ok. Another thing is organic contamination, we got advice from the biology lab, who said that boiling the water for at least 10 minutes will remove all organic contamination. Besides that, we got information from hemel(s)water, who did research on chemical contamination of rainwater, this report stated that it was safe for consumption. However, if we want to commercially sell the beer, there will be more research needed.
“In sociology, a group action is a situation, in which a number of agents take action simultaneously, in order to achieve a common goal. Group action will often take place when social agents realize they are more likely to achieve their goal when acting together, rather than individually.”
This little text explains exactly what we are trying to develop right now. We need your help, so, read carefully and join us!
As you know, we are working on creating awareness about heavy rainfall since a couple of months ago. After doing some research and talking to many stakeholders, our team thinks that creating a movement is actually a really interesting step.
To take care of your properties and protect them against heavy rainfall in a city like Amsterdam, is easier as you think, like we have shown you before, so now we would like to go further!
The platform we are creating is called Raincatchers, and the main goal is to connect citizens, companies and different kind of agents to create more value about this topic. How? So easy!
You, as a citizen of Amsterdam! This platform will give you the option to share your knowledge about prevention measures against floods, receiving feedback and having the chance to know about existing resources to develop your idea.
You, as a company! You will have the option of supporting this network through different services we will offer you.
Of course, actually we are doing interviews to go on with this idea and become it viable and useful for everyone. Taking as a base this idea we are sharing with you in this post, we will start analysing the received feedback to know better your needs, lacks and wishes.
So to conclude, don’t hesitate to join our Facebook group Raincatchers, and lets start moving all together to become Amsterdam a safe city against heavy rains and climate changing.
Here is the survey in case of being curious about what kind of things we would like to know from you. There is in English and also in Dutch, and you can send the answers to: iratisantxo92@gmail.com or dymphieburger@gmail.com. THANK YOU!
If you also want to join the movement, join on Raincatchers.
Today, we went to the innovation expo in Amsterdam Noord. Innovation expo is an event where companies, governmental institutions and knowledge institutes meet and present their work.The innovation expo started as the Club van Maarssen in 2005. Eleven years later it is a biennial event and the network consists of 4000 engaged citizens, policy makers, entrepreneurs and academics.
It was held on the former research and development terrain of Shell, Overhoeks, which is now an under construction neighbourhood. The Overhoeks terrain will be one of Amsterdam’s most sustainable and innovative neighbourhoods.
The innovation expo was was divided in several areas, a food, livability and health area, a water area (for the Dutch water topsector), a mobility and infrastructure area, energy and resources area, big data and sensors area and a built environment area. Our partner in this project, Amsterdam Rainproof, had a stand at the built environment area. At their stand there were start ups, governmental institutions and companies who all had innovative ideas about how to use the space in the city for urban agriculture, making the city greener, the circular economy and how to use rainwater or contaminated water.
The stand of Amsterdam Rainproof at the Innovation Expo (© Amsterdam Rainproof).
Another simple measure you can take to make your house more rainproof is putting a treshold in front of your door. It takes a bit more effort than watering a plant every now and then, but can be a very good emergency measure.
During a heavy rainfall event the water will flow to the lowest part of the street, and that might even be your house! To make sure that the water will not flow into your house, you can make a high threshold. You can read the story of Marleen Doodkorte here.
© Merlijn Michon
You can even make the threshold stronger with some sand bags.This solution is a last minute solution, you could for instance put the threshold there when you heard on the weather forecast that it might rain heavily. The threshold could be built by a carpenter, but if you are really handy, you could even do it yourself.
Did you know that plants could play an important role in decreasing the risk of heavy rainfall damage? No?
Ok, so you might already know that the intensity of showers is increasing and can become a serious problem in for example The Netherlands or UK. Local floods damage buildings in many cities, therefore we need innovative prevention measures!
Plants are nature’s helpers, they can reduce geomorphological instability with their roots, they attract precipitation and make river banks more stable (that is one of the reasons why we have uiterwaarden in The Netherlands. Most of the tree and shrub species that are typical for riverbanks and levees absorb a lot of water, they are called hygrophyte species.
A dense vegetation canopy made of autochthonous helps to protect areas against flash floods. It is, as you can say, one of nature’s most efficient flood protection system, but it’s possible to get highly valuable natural area as well.
But, what are hygrophyte species?
A poplar
Who does not like beer, please raise your hand!
Nobody, right, everybody likes beer. In the first sprint, our coach Joris, was brewing his own beer with his Hema brewing kit and had an idea. He had to use a lot of water, and thought that you could also use rainwater in the beer brewing process. This is a way to save drinking water, but also to use rainwater and make your house more rainproof.
There are many people who drink rainwater, whether it is safe to drink will depend on the environment and whether you cleaned it. If you for example have a lot of particulate matter or other types of air pollution in your environment, you will need a more serious approach for cleaning the water. Besides that, rain water does not contains salt and will have similar effects on your health as demineralised water. It is drinkable, but not if it is the only source of water for you, so “geniet, maar drink met mate” (enjoy, but do not drink too much).
In order to make our beer safe for consumption, we boiled the water, which removed all the organic pollutants. To make it safer, destillation or filtering would be a better idea, because there might still be heavy metals, anorganic pollutants and acids in there. Not so healthy. We will analyse the beer in the lab at the Amsterdam University of Applied science whether the beer is totally safe for consumption.
For those who are interested, Joris uses a Hema beer brewing kit, you can find instructions on brewing beer here.
Big changes start with small steps, right? So a more rainproof Amsterdam also starts with small changes. The team members and coach of the rainproof team realised that they had never taken measures to rainproof their houses. During the brainstorm session, we discovered that we could also test some of the ideas we came up with. Joris, our coach, likes brewing his own beer, so he started brewing his beer with rainwater.
Hemelswater means heavenly water (or rain) in Dutch. Logo has been made by Jeffrey.
