Microsoft experts to develop water leakage solutions at Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival

Experts representing tech giant Microsoft will converge on Northumberland in July as they look to find a solution to the problem of water leakage.

A three-day hackathon, held as part of Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival, will see data crunchers from across the country join forces with a Microsoft team from the UK, US and Hong Kong to tackle the issue head on.

Around 30 analysts will work on data relating to leaks, soil types, water pressure, pipe materials and other elements affecting the likelihood and location of leaks.

The hackathon will run alongside a week-long ‘sprint’, in which a second team comprising industry experts, academics and the public will develop ideas to cut water leakage.

At the end of the week, a gathering of industry experts and regulators will be presented with the findings of the sprint, which will be facilitated by innovation consultancy +Add Strategy.

Northumbrian Water’s group director of information services, Nigel Watson, said: “The fact that we are running the hackathon and sprint alongside one another is pretty rare, so it’s going to be quite exciting to see what comes from it.

“The idea is that we will come away with some really tangible ideas that could make a big difference to how we reduce leakage and the way we respond to leaks.”

He added: “We are hoping for some really ground-breaking ideas to come forward from the work being done on leakage at the NWG Innovation Festival, as well as in the other areas being tackled in the week of sprints.”

Northumbrian Water’s NWG Innovation Festival will run from July 10 to 14 at Newcastle Racecourse.

The event’s headline sponsors are tech firms IBM and Microsoft, telecoms giant BT, engineering business Reece Innovation, IT consulting company CGI and mapping agency Ordnance Survey.