RateMyWater

Is it swimmable? Sippable? A biohazard? Find out.

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Inspiration

Have you ever walked up to a lake, river, or beach and wondered — can I actually get in this? One of our team members didn't get the chance to ask that question. He fell into a river on the Roth Path and got severely ill from the exposure — a completely preventable health scare that stuck with all of us. Combined with this hackathon's theme of water, it sparked an idea. Clean water isn't just a convenience, it's a human right. Contaminated rivers, lakes, and coastlines cause millions of illnesses every year, yet there's no easy, crowdsourced way to know if your local water is safe before you go near it. That gap is what inspired RateMyWater. Nobody should have to find out the hard way.

What it does

RateMyWater lets anyone rate and review any body of water in the world — rivers, lakes, beaches, ponds, oceans — on a scale from Dive In With Mouth Open (5/5) to Biohazard Speed Run (1/5). Users can submit a water body, leave a review, browse an interactive map showing safety ratings at a glance, and search for any water body using smart autocomplete. It's a community-powered water safety platform that gives people honest, human answers to one simple question: can I get in this?

How we built it

We started with research — understanding the real problem, identifying what information people actually needed, and mapping out the features that would solve it. From there we split the work across the team and kept iterating, building feature by feature. We used MongoDB for all data storage, and leveraged its fuzzy search and autocomplete search capabilities to power our intelligent search experience. Our backend handles community submissions, ratings, and geographic data, while Auth0 manages secure user authentication. The frontend was built with a strong focus on making the experience fun, approachable, and interactive for any user.

Challenges we ran into

Deciding which features to prioritize was harder than we expected — we had a long list of real problems we wanted to solve and not enough time to tackle all of them. Communicating the vision clearly was another hurdle; it took real effort to articulate not just what we were building, but why it mattered. Making the app feel genuinely interactive and community-driven — rather than just a static database — required a lot of design and technical iteration to get right.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built something real that solves a real problem, and we did it fast. We're proud of how the rating scale turned out — instantly readable, no jargon, just honest human reviews. The interactive map with color-coded safety scores was technically ambitious and came together beautifully. Most of all, we're proud that the app has a genuine story behind it — a teammate's experience that turned into a tool that could genuinely help people stay safe around water.

What we learned

Beyond the personal lessons, we picked up a stack of new technical skills: working with MongoDB including fuzzy search, autocomplete, and vector search for intelligent data retrieval; building and structuring a backend to handle real user data; integrating Auth0 for secure authentication; and designing a UI that feels fun and accessible without sacrificing usability. We also learned through research just how serious and widespread the issue of water safety awareness is globally — and how much of a difference accessible, crowdsourced information could make.

What's next for RateMyWater

The dream doesn't stop here. We're planning to bring semantic search to RateMyWater — meaning instead of needing the exact name of a lake or river, you could just type "clean water near Washington" or "good beach for kids in Florida" and actually get meaningful results, the way you'd ask a friend. We also want to introduce seasonal ratings, so you can find the best spots for summer swimming, or yes — where to safely skate on ice in winter (because apparently people do that). Beyond water itself, we want to turn RateMyWater into a full destination platform — surfacing hotels, restaurants, activities, and things to do around every water body, so you can plan an entire trip around a five-star lake without ever leaving the app. And of course, none of this matters if nobody knows RateMyWater exists — so our next big push is getting this in front of real people, real swimmers, real hikers, and real parents who deserve to know what they're stepping into before they step into it. The goal is simple: the more people rate, the more lives we keep dry — and healthy.

Built With

  • auth0
  • css
  • eslint
  • framer-motion
  • google-maps-javascript-api
  • google-places-autocomplete-api
  • lucide-react
  • mongodb
  • mongoose
  • next.js
  • postcss
  • react
  • tailwind-css
  • typescript
  • vercel
  • vercel-blob
  • zod
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