Aquaverse

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Inspiration

People who live beside urban streams rarely link what they see in the water to their own health. "One Health" sounds abstract, and a stressor's damage shows up weeks later, out of sight. We wanted people to see that link, cause it themselves and replay it in minutes. Built for the OneAquaHealth IEEE Global Hackathon, Track 4: Awareness & Storytelling.

What it does

AquaVerse is a living pixel-art urban stream. You describe a real stream in five picture questions (or in your own words, read by AI), and it builds that stream. Then you apply a heatwave, drought, storm runoff, sewage leak or tree clearing and watch mayflies, midges, mosquitoes and fish respond. Three gauges (ecosystem health, biodiversity, human health risk) move, and a narrator explains each change in one sentence. You can rewind to before a stressor and compare.

How we built it

• TypeScript simulation engine, seeded and deterministic, running in a Web Worker
• React + Vite UI with pixel art drawn on a canvas
• Rule-based narrator built only from what the simulation did
• AI/ML API: TypeSafe Jev turns a free-text description into answers and scores learners' explanations; Amazon Nova Micro rewords the narrator
• Small Node server deployed on Render, 69 automated tests

Challenges we ran into

• Tuning the ecology so each stressor's chain shows up clearly within about a minute
• Keeping the narrator honest when stressors overlap
• Running AI on under $1 of credit: caching, rate limits and a daily cap

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• No login, no cost per user, works from a link and on a phone
• Every outcome traces back to a rule written in the field guide
• The same seed and answers always replay the same run

What we learned

• People grasp One Health faster by causing a change than by reading about it
• Simplifying is fine as long as you say so
• Decision models suit structured answers better than chat models

What's next for Aquaverse

• Pull stream answers from the OneAquaHealth citizen science app
• Have ecologists review the rules
• Classroom scenarios, more species and seasons, more languages

Built With

• javascript
• jev
• vite