Sentinel Utilities

Inspiration

We were inspired by the need to reduce conflicts and duplicated resources between utility construction projects. We wanted to create a way for utilities to identify projects happening near each other and discover opportunities to coordinate.

What it does

Sentinel Utilities analyzes utility construction plans and identifies projects that are geographically close and have overlapping timelines. It visualizes these potential overlaps to highlight opportunities for sharing resources such as crews, equipment, and staging areas.

How we built it

We used Python to process public utility data and calculate geographic distances between projects. We built the interactive dashboard using Next.js, Supabase, and Leaflet, connecting the processed data to an interactive map and project information.

Challenges we ran into

Working with real-world utility data was challenging because some project information was inconsistent or incomplete, especially geographic information. We had to clean the data and account for uncertainty while still producing useful results within the hackathon timeframe.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of turning publicly available utility information into an interactive tool that makes potential construction overlaps easier to identify. We also successfully connected data processing, geographic analysis, and visualization into one application.

What we learned

We learned how to work with messy real-world datasets, perform geographic analysis, and connect a data pipeline to a full web application. We also learned how important it is to communicate uncertainty when working with incomplete data.

What's next for Sentinel Utilities

We hope to expand Sentinel Utilities to include more utilities and projects, improve geographic matching, incorporate more detailed scheduling information, and provide more accurate estimates of potential cost and resource savings.