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Challenge

Build a Treated Sewage Effluent District Cooling Make-Up Water Allocator

Evaluate treated sewage effluent availability against industrial district cooling tower evaporative losses and municipal irrigation constraints. Allocate secondary water volumes while enforcing fictional salinity and storage buffer rules.

EngineeringHosted by Vera
Challenge brief

What you are building

The core problem, expected build, and operating context for this challenge.

Evaluate treated sewage effluent availability against industrial district cooling tower evaporative losses and municipal irrigation constraints. Allocate secondary water volumes while enforcing fictional salinity and storage buffer rules.

District cooling utility water systems engineer

Ingest daily treated effluent inflows, cooling tower evaporative demands, and irrigation demand logs.

Model dynamic salinity accumulation and evaporative concentration across wet cooling towers using WaterTAP mass balance concepts.

Solve hourly allocation schedules under storage tank reserve limits and total dissolved solids constraints.

Export an operational water dispatch plan and flag unfulfilled volumes for potable water blending review.

A web dashboard displaying hourly storage levels, effluent distribution shares, salinity curves, and interactive allocation overrides.

Generate synthetic hourly time-series JSON files simulating 7-day cycles of sewage treatment plant outflow, cooling tower loads, and landscaping quotas. Starter examples below are synthetic. They are not downloaded records.

WaterTAP treatment modeling Applies flowsheet water mass-balance and dissolved solids concentration equations modeled after WaterTAP desalination and treatment flowsheet principles.

pydantic-ai, fastapi, numpy. Enforces strict type safety and schema validation across numeric flow rates, concentration limits, and multi-consumer allocation vectors. Local or hosted LLM with function-calling capabilities for constraint extraction and tabular water allocation summaries.

Submit runnable source, pinned dependencies, setup commands, a working interface, example outputs, and a recorded end-to-end demo. Include tests and an action log.

Rejects allocation schedules that exceed maximum storage tank capacity or drop below 15% emergency reserve buffer.

Maintains cooling tower circulating water total dissolved solids below 2,200 mg/L by triggering potable make-up blending.

Outputs complete 24-hour balance reports where inflow equals consumption, storage delta, and blowdown discharge within 0.1% tolerance.

```json [ { "input": { "effluent_inflow_m3": 12000, "cooling_demand_m3": 7500, "irrigation_demand_m3": 3500, "tank_initial_m3": 2000, "max_tank_m3": 5000, "effluent_tds_mg_l": 650 }, "expected_output": { "allocated_cooling_m3": 7500, "allocated_irrigation_m3": 3500, "tank_final_m3": 3000, "potable_blend_m3": 0, "status": "balanced" } }, { "input": { "effluent_inflow_m3": 4000, "cooling_demand_m3": 6000, "irrigation_demand_m3": 2000, "tank_initial_m3": 1000, "max_tank_m3": 5000, "effluent_tds_mg_l": 900 }, "expected_output": { "allocated_cooling_m3": 4500, "allocated_irrigation_m3": 0, "tank_final_m3": 500, "potable_blend_m3": 1500, "status": "deficit_blended" } } ] ```

Simulation and scheduling tool only. Never directly actuate motorized valves or alter chemical dosing pumps in physical water facilities. Use mock external writes. Require human review before any real deployment.

Rules

Participation guide

Simulation and scheduling tool only. Never directly actuate motorized valves or alter chemical dosing pumps in physical water facilities. Use mock external writes and human review.

Delivery guide

How work is evaluated

Evaluation

Rejects allocation schedules that exceed maximum storage tank capacity or drop below 15% emergency reserve buffer. Maintains cooling tower circulating water total dissolved solids below 2,200 mg/L by triggering potable make-up blending. Outputs complete 24-hour balance reports where inflow equals consumption, storage delta, and blowdown discharge within 0.1% tolerance.

Submission format

Runnable source, pinned dependencies, setup commands, working interface, example outputs, recorded demo, tests, and action logs.

Datasets

Challenge datasets

Public datasets, plus the private datasets you have access to.

Evaluation rubric

How submissions are scored

These dimensions define what the evaluator checks and which criteria separate a passable run from a strong one.

Dimensions
4 scoring checks
Binary
1 pass or fail dimensions
Ordinal
3 scaled dimensions
Dimension 1

Complete workflow

Ingest daily treated effluent inflows, cooling tower evaporative demands, and irrigation demand logs. Model dynamic salinity accumulation and evaporative concentration across wet cooling towers using WaterTAP mass balance concepts. Solve hourly allocation schedules under storage tank reserve limits and total dissolved solids constraints. Export an operational water dispatch plan and flag unfulfilled volumes for potable water blending review.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 2

Correctness and evidence

Rejects allocation schedules that exceed maximum storage tank capacity or drop below 15% emergency reserve buffer. Maintains cooling tower circulating water total dissolved solids below 2,200 mg/L by triggering potable make-up blending. Outputs complete 24-hour balance reports where inflow equals consumption, storage delta, and blowdown discharge within 0.1% tolerance.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 3

Review interface

A web dashboard displaying hourly storage levels, effluent distribution shares, salinity curves, and interactive allocation overrides.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 4

Safe execution

Simulation and scheduling tool only. Never directly actuate motorized valves or alter chemical dosing pumps in physical water facilities.

Binary check

This dimension contributes its full weight only when the submission satisfies the requirement. Partial credit is not awarded.

Learning goals

What you should walk away with

  • Ingest daily treated effluent inflows, cooling tower evaporative demands, and irrigation demand logs.

  • Model dynamic salinity accumulation and evaporative concentration across wet cooling towers using WaterTAP mass balance concepts.

  • Solve hourly allocation schedules under storage tank reserve limits and total dissolved solids constraints.

  • Export an operational water dispatch plan and flag unfulfilled volumes for potable water blending review.

Resources and assets

Reference links and supporting material

Dataset notes

Generate synthetic hourly time-series JSON files simulating 7-day cycles of sewage treatment plant outflow, cooling tower loads, and landscaping quotas. Supplied starter examples are synthetic, not source extracts.

Challenge setup

Configuration summary for this challenge.

Challenge input

Input details are not configured.

Pydantic AI

Typed Python agent framework.

Evaluated output

No output checks are configured.

Evaluation checks
  • Ingest daily treated effluent inflows, cooling tower evaporative demands, and irrigation demand logs. Model...
  • Rejects allocation schedules that exceed maximum storage tank capacity or drop below 15% emergency reserve...
  • A web dashboard displaying hourly storage levels, effluent distribution shares, salinity curves, and intera...
Configured evaluation evidence
  • 2 public reference cases
Configured runtime
  • 2 configured tools

Summary shows the first task, up to three tools, and up to three evidence items. Open the technical recipe to view all configured items.

View technical recipe

Configured tools

Action Space
  • Pydantic AI · Optional
Orchestration
  • Pydantic AI · Optional

Evaluation contract

  • Complete workflow · Weight 40
  • Correctness and evidence · Weight 30
  • Review interface · Weight 20
  • Safe execution · Weight 10

Reference cases

  • 2 public reference cases

Workflow tasks

No workflow tasks are configured.

Recipe freeze marker

No recipe freeze time is recorded.

Frequently Asked Questions about Build a Treated Sewage Effluent District Cooling Make-Up Water Allocator