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huMANGROVE

huMANGROVE

Rochester, NY

Award Status
3rd Place
Team Category
High School
School/Organization
The Harley School
Challenge Year
2018 (pilot)
What is the problem your team addressed for this challenge and how is it related to climate change?
In recent years, coastal areas around the world have seen increases in storm intensity and frequency, but it's also the normal weather patterns of the world that are drastically changing due to climate change. Our design will be used to combat these intensifying weather patterns by breaking storm surges on the coast and partially holding off raising water levels and rough conditions, protecting property and allowing people along the worlds coastlines to live safer and more sustainable lives.
What does your design solution do? How does it solve improve the problem you selected?
Our design solution mitigates the effects of coastline erosion and damage. By utilising a dense structure inspired by the roots of mangrove trees, we can effectively dampen the force of strong waves, which contribute to coastline erosion and cause flooding and damage in coastline communities. It's small size allows for easy deployment, and the structure requires less materials than traditional breakwaters and other existing solutions. Additionally, the root-based design allows water to flow through freely, minimizing disruption to aquatic ecosystems.
How was your solution inspired by nature? What organisms did you learn from and how did what you learned inform your design?
One of natures solutions to dampening waves is the root structure of the mangrove tree, which grows in coastal colonies and must cope with constant wave action. The dense root structure efficiently absorbs the energy of the waves, reducing coastal erosion while still allowing water to pass through. Our designs hexagonal modular structure also incorporates a Voronoi diagram pattern commonly found in nature (for instance in beehives and plant cell distributions) to maximize the area covered by each individual mesh of roots.